Andreas Tille wrote:
I tried to give reasons why the support of special fields sounds reasonable. So I see this general debian-science list as of great value for general discussion and sharing ideas, but I would prefer if some more CDDs (debian-physics, debian-chemestry, etc.) would evolve and thus you will have good chances to find sponsors in these fields.
While I agree that it would be easy to find the sponsors that way, I strongly oppose that idea of splitting the community further.
For example, When I have a laptop related problem, I often like to post to debian-user first instead of debian-laptop simply because more number of users read my post on debian-user. I get the same help from debian-user than debian-laptop but very quickly. It is the expertise on the list that matters than fine-grainly dividing the community to the atomic level.
Moreover, often the problems are interrelated. A chemistry user will not be asking about problems in chemistry but will be asking about problems related to debian+chemistry.... In such a case some other physicist using Debian might also benefit from that discussion (even though at an abstract level).... There will be more passive learning instead of active learning if the lists are more general than being specific.
Besides, it is also a pain to subscribe to multiple lists when your area of interest falls in between two separate mailing lists. Then you have to track multiple lists. Instead if there is just one list, I can choose to ignore some threads if they are not of interest to me.
As long as the list is friendly for newbies, no one flames about OT topics etc., debian-science in my opinion is preferable than more specific ones like debian-physics, debian-chemistry, debian-electrical ....
just my 2 cents raju -- Kamaraju S Kusumanchi Graduate Student, MAE Cornell University http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/