[volunteers] Carpool mailing list... er... progress report

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Andrew Fife (AFife at untangle.com):

> if the carpool list hasn't ever really been used and it causes an admin 
> or resource burden....

Hi, Andrew.   To answer your implied question:

1.  As already noted, it's not been used (except for Kai's single post
asking if anyone else is on it, which went unanswered).

2.  It isn't a resource burden in any meaningful sense of that word.

3.  It's a very tiny listadmin burden, in the limited sense that its admin
queue is yet another spam target and results in listadmin notices of
held postings (spam), daily.

I'm perfectly OK with it sitting there continuing to do nothing for the
next five years, if people are stuck in the "Well, let's not delete it,
because it's for a good cause and somebody might, some day, want to use
it" mode.  Your opinion, please:  What would you think is an appropriate
number of years of continuous near-zero activity before that particular
mailing list should be reasonably judged a bad idea and removed?  The
record stands at two years, at present.

I am, in fact, very curious about what are the appropriate criteria, in
the opinion of our various active volunteers, for what _is_ considered a
useful mailing list -- because we can in fact create an almost arbitrary
number of additional ones.  If people think that Carpool is a worthwhile
mailing list despite having almost no membership, only one
(non-substantive) posting in two years with no responses, and zero
success at its mission, we can certainly create additioanl lists that
meet those same criteria.

(And also, conversely, I'm curious about people's criteria for
determining what is a useless mailing list.)

I'm far more interested in the answers to those questions about people's
_actual views_ than I am in knowning which actions on my part people
around here "would support".