>** Sometime around 06:14 12/6/96, Cindy Stanley said:
>
>>I've heard some of you mention that you run mailing lists with
>>*thousands* of
>>subscribers. What kinds of lists are these that would attract such a huge
>>subscribership? How long have they been up and running?
Here are our current counts:
4608 firewalls
4267 firewalls-digest
286 firewalls-performance
595 list-managers
336 list-managers-digest
2104 majordomo-announce
687 majordomo-users
257 majordomo-docs
345 majordomo-workers
I tend to group lists into two categories: discussion lists, and
announcement lists. List-Managers is an example of a discussion list;
these lists tend to have fewer subscribers, but carry more messages (though
the messages are often shorter). Majordomo-Announce is an example of an
announcement list; these lists tend to have more subscribers, but fewer
messages (though the messages are often longer). I'd consider the
moderated humor lists and the travel agency "special offer" lists that
other posters in this thread discussed to be announcement lists.
One of the big differences between discussion and announcement lists is how
quickly messages need to be processed. With an announcement list, the
messages going out often aren't time-critical; it doesn't matter exactly
when the recipients receive the messages, as long as it's within some
reasonable period of time (24 hours, say). With a discussion list, it's
much more important to get the messages delivered quickly; if they aren't,
it becomes hard for folks to follow and participate in the discussion.
Digests are an interesting way to make a discussion list look and feel like
an announcement list; it's harder to participate in the discussions, but
you get a smaller number of larger messages. If someone just wants to
lurk, this is better for both them and for the list maintainer.
The Firewalls list is an interesting example of a big, active discussion
list (thousands of subscribers, anywhere from 30-100 messages per day,
averaging about 45 messages per day). We've certainly learned a lot about
how to make lists work by trying to keep up with the load that Firewalls
generates.
-Brent
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Brent Chapman | Great Circle Associates | 1057 West Dana Street
Brent@GreatCircle.COM | http://www.greatcircle.com | Mountain View, CA 94041
----------------------+----------------------------+------------------------
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