Dave Thomas wrote:

# Yasushi Shoji <yashi / yashi.com> writes:
# 
# > > How about ruby-devel
# > 
# > I liked it.  But, I also thoguth that someone might complain it's too
# > similar to ruby-dev and confusing.
# 
# If we split the list, what happens to the newsgroup. Does it just
# mirror -talk, or does it get both?

Hopefully both, in both directions. If there is enough sustained traffic, 
then someone (not me again) can submit an RFC proposing that 
comp.lang.ruby undergo a Perl-like subdivision into (say) 
comp.lang.ruby.misc, comp.lang.ruby.moddev, and comp.lang.ruby.intdev.

# What percentage of folks read this via usenet, as opposed to the list?
# Will we be disenfranchising our usenet readers?

I use both. 

Keep in mind that success brings volume. If Ruby interest grows like that 
of Python and (early) Perl, even if you subdivide mail lists now, you will 
likely be facing the same sort of volume issues all over again a few 
months down the road. Look at comp.lang.perl.misc to see what the long 
term future for Ruby traffic might be like. 

FWIW, when I was pushing the comp.lang.ruby RFC, the range of 100-200 
e-mails a day was generally (although fortunately, not exclusively) 
regarded as the lower mail list traffic threshold that warranted a 
newsgroup. 

2 common mechanisms for dealing with such mail volume were said to be 
threaded mail readers and daily consolidated e-mail batch modes that sent 
you 1 e-mail with a table of contents and the concatenated e-mails of the 
preceding 24 hours. 

And of course switching over to using a newsgroup rather than using a mail 
list is another major way of dealing with this issue. Guess what one of my 
forward-looking motivations for getting comp.lang.ruby approved was? :-)

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)