Long-time fan, first-time poster ;)
I have never been comfortable with the proliferation of Wikimedia
lists. ComProj is one of the ones that I love in spirit and
principle, because it is an open project that is compatible with any
number of copies of itself. But I would find it much easier to
contribute to comproj-related initiatives if they were discussed on,
say, foundation-l and #wikimedia. You could start all of those
threads with [comproj] if you wanted.
If you are worried about flooding some people with too much
information -- keep the high-flood discussions on a wiki, where people
can choose their own watchlists and review an entire thread at once,
and link to them when starting a new one. Or, as Simon suggests,
actively explore new tools for collaboration.
But we hurt ourselves by making so many separate (and often
unnecessarily private) lists and channels. Meanwhile the main lists
and channels have dropped in traffic since their peaks in 2006. No
surprise - that's when all of the committees and walled gardens
started being built. The process must be addictive, because this has
been a known problem for years, and we keep doing it.
How about organizing a list- and irc-chan-consolidation campaign? I
think this would help communication and community building a lot, and
wold be motivated by such a campaign. It would also be an interesting
first step in getting people to think about what sorts of new comm
technologies we could be supporting or developing.
Sj