Nan:2006-10-23-haskell-lcc
From Usenet Big-8 Management Board
From: board@big-8.org (The Big-8 Management Board) Subject: 2nd RFD: comp.lang.haskell (LAST CALL FOR COMMENTS) Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, comp.lang.functional, alt.comp.lang.haskell Followup-To: news.groups Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 16:03:56 -0700 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) comp.lang.haskell This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup, comp.lang.haskell. PROCEDURE: The B8MB plans to begin voting on this proposal after five days. Please offer any final discussion or comments before the end of this waiting period. Voting may take up to one week (7 days); a result will be posted following the end of the voting period. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. The full group creation procedure is documented here: http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=policies:proposals NEWSGROUPS LINE: comp.lang.haskell comp.lang.haskell Haskell concepts, implementation, and use. SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION: A moderate amount of discussion in news.groups and comp.lang.functional showed primarily support for the new group, mixed with concerns about whether the quantity of traffic required a new group and concerns that separating out this traffic from comp.lang.functional could be disruptive to the community there. It is not known what response, if any, took place on the Haskell mailing lists. A few people expressed interest in having a gateway between the new group and one of the existing Haskell mailing lists. IN FAVOR: Aaron Denney <wnoise@ofb.net> Ivan Jager <aij+nospam@andrew.cmu.edu> Joachim Durchholz <jo@durchholz.org> Mark T.B. Carroll <Mark.Carroll@Aetion.com> Martin X. Moleski, SJ <moleski@canisius.edu> mike.klaas@gmail.com <mike.klaas@gmail.com> Pekka Karjalainen <pkarjala@paju.oulu.fi> LEANING TOWARDS IN FAVOR: Hans Aberg <haberg@math.su.se> Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho <antti-juhani@kaijanaho.fi> SKEPTICAL: Aatu Koskensilta <aatu.koskensilta@xortec.fi> Steve Bonine <spb@pobox.com> AGAINST: James Graves <ansible@typhoon.xnet.com> Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> <nobrowser@gmail.com> PROBABLY HAVE AN OPINION BUT DID NOT STATE IT CLEARLY: 2Rowdy <Harry131313@gmail.com> Doug Freyburger <dfreybur@yahoo.com> RATIONALE: comp.lang.haskell Discussion of Haskell is currently fragmented through Usenet. It is the only major functional programming language without a dedicated Big 8 group, and thus has become the topic of a substantial portion of the traffic in comp.lang.functional. The main purposes of this group, therefore, are to consolidate this traffic into a dedicated group, and to facilitate finding Haskell-related discussion. This group has been the subject of periodic discussion for several years, most notably in 2001 when a straw poll showed general support but not enough interest, numerically, to warrant proposal under the old Big 8 group creation system (see <9j6ufp$fil$3@marduk.litech.org> and the accompanying thread for details). TRAFFIC ANALYSIS: This analysis is limited by the Google Groups interface. However, in the past year, at least 280 distinct threads (a fifth of the total number of threads for that time) in comp.lang.functional include discussion of Haskell. The number of posts per thread is unknown, as is the number of relevant posts that do not contain the word "haskell" (a not infrequent occurrence, as the distinct syntax is enough to make Haskell code easily recognizable without specific identification). There is additionally some traffic scattered through other parts of the comp.lang.* hierarchy as well as in alt.comp.lang.haskell. It is unknown what fraction of the active mailing list community responsible for generating the traffic in fa.haskell would be interested in using a Big 8 newsgroups instead or in addition. CHARTER: The comp.lang.haskell unmoderated newsgroup is for the discussion of the programming language Haskell, including but not limited to: * conceptual and mathematical foundations * interpreter and compiler development * libraries * learning Haskell * programming in Haskell * implementation-specific issues * comparison to other programming languages (within reason) Cryptographic signatures and small source code snippets are permitted, but spam and other binary posts are prohibited. Students seeking help on school work should be handled on a case-by-case basis. In general, thoughtful questions by students showing a true desire to learn may be appropriate for discussion, but blatant attempts to have newsgroup participants complete assignments are likely to be ignored at best, and possibly reported to the relevant institution. DISTRIBUTION: This document has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups news.groups comp.lang.functional alt.comp.lang.haskell The proponent will also post pointers to: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists PROPONENT: Jeffrey M. Vinocur <jeff@litech.org> CHANGE HISTORY: 2006-10-23 2nd RFD 2006-10-16 1st RFD