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