[erlang-questions] List vs Group

[Raimo Niskanen]

Hi all.

We are thinking about not allowing members of the Google group
Erlang Programming to post to the group.

This is why:

Once the group was set up as a mirror of the mailing list erlang-questions.

Then people could read the list in Google groups's forum like web
interface, they could also join the group, and when posting, if they
posted to the mailing list too and were members of the mailing list
it all worked fine.

Unfortunately discipline is hard, so some forgot to post to the list,
forgot to subscribe to the list and so on.  Then it was awkward having to
post both to the list and the group.

So I recently fixed a bridge from the group to the list.  But now when
someone posts to the group only and it shows up on the list, when you
reply to such a post the list is not replied to but instead the group.
So now you have to check that the list is replied to and manually add it
if not when you reply to a post.

This situation is perhaps even further from the ideal.

So the clean back-to-basics solution is to not allow members of the group
to post to the group, since they have to be members of the list anyway and
just until now had to Cc the list when posting to the group.
Why not make posting to the list the only possible way?

How much would this disturb group users?  Since I do not use the group
myself I would not know...

Best regards
-- 

/ Raimo Niskanen, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB