Span in the lists

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Sat, 5 Mar 2016 18:02:47 +0100
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> Are there maybe other situations where "no registration required" is
> an important feature to have?

	Pure and simple ease of use, there are a lot of FreeBSD mailing
lists, some of them very specialised.

	If I have a question or report appropriate to one of those then
with the current conventions I can pop a mail to the list, expect to see
the replies (reply to all is the convention) and not be bothered with
anything else on the list but the one thing that drove me to seek contact
with specialists.

	Going the other waY I'd have to susbcribe to the list, do
the validation dance, send my question, see answers and all the other list
traffic and eventually I'd have to unsubscribe. It's not a lot of work -
but it's a big multiplier on sending a single email - especially if the
reply is "try the guys in $otherlist".

	The current system is maximally convenient for the person who wants
one-off access to experts. To me that seems to be the correct model for
support mailing lists.

	Spam is the risk - and has been noted the incidence is low. I
presume there are some very good spam filters on the list.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org>