[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to the projects

[Anthony]

On 12/23/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Can we have a semi-restricted mailing list?  The purpose of the list
> would be to find solutions to copyright dilemmas.  (That we are here
> discussing it in relation to copyright law would not prevent this
> technique from being applied for other lists with different purposes.)
> Full membership in the list would be limited in number.  Read-only
> membership would be much larger.  If the list reaches its arbitrarily
> established membership limit, a new "list2" could be started with
> similar restrictions.  List2 members could then move to list1 when there
> is a vacancy.  Preset criteria, including prolonged absence, could be
> established for dropping people from the list.
>
Is a mailing list really the best way of handling this?  It seems to
me that there would be a lot of unnecessary repetition coming from a
list.  Most of the copyright dilemmas that come up from time to time
have already been resolved to a point where anything further is just
speculation.  The only benefit I see from a semi-restricted list as
opposed to a wiki (or subset of a wiki) would be that perhaps experts
would feel more comfortable contributing to a list.  Is this even
true?  And would there be a way around it (maybe a semi-restricted
wiki)?

A list in general would also be helpful for just pointing people who
don't know where to look to the information in the wiki, but any of
the existing open mailing lists could easily handle that volume in
addition to the present volume.

Anthony