Re: IETF HTML WOrking Group List

"Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 94 13:55:10 EDT
Message-id: <9407291755.AA25901@ulua.hal.com>
Reply-To: html-wg@oclc.org
Originator: html-wg@oclc.org
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From: "Daniel W. Connolly" <connolly@hal.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <html-wg@oclc.org>
Subject: Re: IETF HTML WOrking Group List 
X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
X-Comment: HTML Working Group (Private)

In message <9407291705.AA04850@ws02-00>, Stu Weibel writes:

Lots of good stuff... a few comments, though

Hmmm... it seems that the Reply-To header is getting set
to html-wg@oclc.org, instead of the sender. Is that what
is intended? It makes it difficult to reply privately
to the author of a message, and it means that if somebody
sends a message to the list without first subscribing,
they're not likely to see any replies.


>A number of other mailing lists and Usenet groups afford ample
>opportunity for discussions of philosophy, proposed features, and
>announcements of WWW systems and resources.  Those interested in
>general discussions of WWW issues may wish to join one of the general
>Web discussions hosted elsewhere, including:
>
>      www-announce   WWW announcements of general interest
>      www-talk       Technical discussions of WWW issues
>      www-html       Discussions of proposed future enhancements to HTML
>      web4lib        Delivery of Library services via WWW

This is GREAT! Give the subscribers a MESS of background into
so they can research questions for themselves and come up to
speed before posting.

I think it's worth spending some time to carefully edit the
subscription-response-blurb so that

	(1) it's got enough info that folks can research
	lots of issues by themselves, and

	(2) it's clear and easy to read; i.e. it doesn't look
	like the mess below or like a flag Gopher menu or
	FTP directory listing.

I think it would be useful to give machine-readable references
to resource that we mention, for example:

	www-announce-request@info.cern.ch
	www-talk-request@info.cern.ch
	web4lib-request@??????

There's a discussion of web-related mailing lists at:

	http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Administration/Mailing/Overview.html

While you're at it, you can give folks access to a whole mess
of background info:

	IETF Working Groups:
	http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/html.charters/wg-dir.html

	IETF HTTP server:
	http://ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/home.html

	IETF FTP archives:
	ftp://ftp.isi.edu/ (among others)

	WWW Project:
	http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
	telnet:info.cern.ch

	HTML info:
	http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html

>HTML Working Group Chair:    
>
>   Tim Berners-Lee             timbl@www3.cern.ch

I think www3.cern.ch is the product of some strange configuration
at CERN. It may work for some time, but I doubt it will last.
I suggest timbl@w3.org, or the tried-and-true timbl@info.cern.ch.
Tim?


And about pointers to me: while you're giving folks my
email address, please give them a pointer to:

	http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-spec

and ask them to read through those materials before firing
off questions to me.


>COMMANDS and REQUESTS.  Send messages that contain commands to:
>
>     listserv@oclc.org 

Is it also possible (advisable?) to send administrative requests
to the address
	html-wg-request@oclc.org
as is the convention? If not, I think you're asking for trouble.

>   Stuart Weibel                weibel@oclc.org

Sometimes folks expect the alias

	html-wg-owner@oclc.org

to correspond to the list maintainer/owner. Perhaps this was just
an internal convention from when I was at CONVEX, but I think
it's a general net.convention.

Dan