Discussion Groups / Mailing Lists at QuestionCopyright.org

These are all the mailing lists / discussion groups we use at QuestionCopyright.org.  If you want to be on one of these, or know of a list that should be here but isn’t, please tell us.  All lists are @questioncopyright.org unless otherwise specified.

  • discuss: General discussion & ideas list.  Includes some people who are not officially affiliated with QCO in anyway, but are just interested (so for example, not everyone on this list has edit/admin privs on the site).  Low traffic; a few messages a day at most.
  • editors: Somewhat more action-oriented list.  This is where we discuss articles that we’re working on, or thinking of doing, and other actual project activity.  All the members are officially or semi-officially “inside the circle”: many of them have actual responsibilities at QCO, some have a title and a QCO business card, and everyone on this list either has edit/admin privs on the site or would if they ever wanted it.  Low-to-medium traffic.
  • qcotech: Strictly for discussion of issues with technical infrastructure at QCO (e.g., the web site, our Google Apps / Google Docs areas, Drupal questions, etc).  Only people who help maintain the site are on this list, generally.  Low-to-medium traffic.
  • grants: Grantwriting discussions.  This list manages to stay fairly on topic, and is medium-to-high traffic right now, as we’re very actively grantwriting.  Sumana Harihareswara is our fundraising coordinator.  She’s doing some grantwriting, and coordinating and organizing our application stream, i.e., keeping track of deadlines, program areas, etc, so we are efficient and apply in the most likely places first.
  • nyfrunch (this one is at yahoogroups.com): Started as a social list for people in New York who attend our Friday 2pm lunches at Soy and Sake (near 7th Avenue and Bleeker in Manhattan).  However, this list organically expanded its scope and now has a fair amount of general Free Culture discussion, often interesting and sometimes quite useful for QCO, even though it’s generally not as goal-oriented as the discussions on the editors list.  Medium traffic: a few threads a day.

None of these lists are public nor have public archives.  We’d certainly consider having a public list, when appropriate, but we’re not sure the world needs yet another general copyright reform discussion list open to the public.  There are already plenty of those, and as we’re trying to get stuff done here, inboxitis is to be avoided.

Many discussions turn out to be appropriate for both discuss@ and editors@, and so are sent to both lists.  There is some overlap in membership, but no one’s ever complained (perhaps some people’s mailreaders are folding duplicates; I know mine is).
 
Almost everyone on qcotech@ or grants@ is also on at least one of the other lists, if not more than one.  There’s often topical overlap of course: for example, a discussion on editors@ about editorial policy and whether to try to include an image with every post might spark a discussion on qcotech@ about the fact that the Upload module isn’t working right and so it’s hard for some people to put images into posts.