[1195] in Moira
Re: Wacky suggestion: expiration dates on mailing lists
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Sommerfeld)
Wed Oct 21 16:30:56 1998
To: "Jeremy H. Brown" <jhbrown@ai.mit.edu>
Cc: bug-moira@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 20 Oct 1998 23:54:36 -0400 (EDT) ."
<13869.23292.984464.773851@suspiria.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 16:29:55 -0400
From: Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld@orchard.arlington.ma.us>
> Random idea: It should be possible to put an expiration-date on
> mailing lists. That way, lists with obvious finite lifetimes (rush94)
> could silently GC themselves (or maybe send one last "I'm about to
> die" message to the list owner a day early, just in case...)
This makes a lot of sense. Here's some potentially relevant bits of
implementation experience:
We had something like that at apollo, albeit semi-manually
administered. The biggest problem with this was that all lists had to
have expirations, but often long-lived/permanent lists didn't have
clear ownership (most commonly the ownership didn't get updated as
people moved on), so sometimes "real" lists would get deleted because
the owners weren't around/active/etc.
Another note.. one day does not allow much time for a response...
I think something like two months warning to the list owner, followed
by one month, one week, and one day warnings to the list itself, would
be more appropriate. Also, consider faculty who go away for months or
years over the summer.
- Bill
