[okfn-help] help with mailing lists

Mon Jan 25 22:22:39 GMT 2010

dear all,

I would like some help - I want to start a mailing list. I also don't 
want to start another mailing list. So. Simple, practical bit first:

edinburgh at lists.okfn.org - this is for organising a mini-OKCon in 
Edinburgh. If it turned into a news list that would be fine with me too.
Who should I nudge to help set this up - Martin, James...?

Okay, here goes the tortuous bit:

I already am list owner for two open geodata mailing lists... why would 
I want to start a third one?

geo-discuss at lists.okfn.org - this dates from the publicgeodata.org 
campaign, the early days of OSM etc, mainly used for policy talk.

geodata at lists.osgeo.org - the mailing list for the geodata committee of 
OSGeo. Quite a few public administration peeps there.

Both of these lists have become very quiet over the last couple of 
years. Last summer I proposed to kill off the geo-discuss list and 
invite its members to the geodata list. No-one objected, I never did it.

Recently Jonny started a stub for a geodata working group for CKAN, to 
work on a priority package collection and maybe geodata-specific 
metadata plugins: http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/geodata

We had a cheerful and productive conversation with some people from the 
Centre for Geospatial Science in Nottingham about next steps for it:

Wanting this geodata WG group to be two things:

- a coordinating effort for work on CKAN package listings, adding 
geo-metadata to anything with a location
- a space for people to share ideas about what they're working on, with 
half an eye on building a "coalition of the willing" for open and 
geospatial funding calls.

If the two tasks stay in the same place, less chance of a group effort 
turning into a talking shop and slowly losing momentum.

Perhaps I'd be happier starting a posterous group blog, inviting people 
to email that rather than email a list.

In short:

- Option 1 - just start a new WG list, stop worrying about the other lists
- Option 2 - try to move the WG conversation to one of the existing 
lists, or merge them and ditto (but there are an awful lot of people who 
don't really know one another on both of those lists)
- Option 3 - don't start a new list, but try to coordinate the WG 
through other means (like a group blog)

I would value any opinions aired - I am just not sure what to do about 
this, and now i'm starting to block on doing other things.

cheers,

jo
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