Main List Problems

[Judy]

Hi, everyone!  I don't usually post here, but I heard that there was a
thread about the problems with the main list.

I'm one of the elves, and I can tell you that we have been totally
swamped since OoP came out.  This has made it very hard to do anything
about the repetitive posts and such on the main list. Yes, we've
considered enslaving -- er, recruiting -- more elves, but it takes a
long time to learn to do pendings and such, so this would not be an
immediate solution.

I personally like the idea of closing the main list and directing
newbies to another list.  One of the benefits to closing the list
would be that elves would be able to pay more attention to the posts
by non-moderated members.  This would include both replying to good
posts, and doing something about bad posts.  In order to free up elf
time, though, the newbie list would have to be unmoderated, or at
least not moderated by the existing elves. My idea is that after a
month or two, members could leave the newbie list and go on moderated
status on the main list.  I don't think it would be all that hard to
explain to new members why we doing this -- the main list is FULL. 
10,000 members.  Too many.

However, clearly some other people don't like the idea of a different
list for new members, and I have no idea what the overall level of
support is for a newbie list.  

I think Debbie has a good point; the list may become more interesting
in a few weeks, once school has started. There seems to be a lot of
repetitive posts each summer.  Hey, new paper reporters call this
"silly season!"  But, given the size of the list, just the end of
summer may not be enough. So, please keep your suggestions coming!  We
elves are paying close attention.

-- Judy Serenity