ADVANCED-DOTNET is being retired...

Unfortunately the old ADVANCED-DOTNET
mailing list at DevelopMentor is being put down,
like an old but still on the odd occasion faithful dog. This
would be one of the first .Net mailing lists I ever really
latched onto (about 6 years ago...) and there have been some
pretty bright sparks on their since day one.

Hi all

We are currently undertaking an infrastructure review at DevelopMentor and
have realised that apart from this one list the listserv is not really used
any more. Unfortunately we cannot really justify maintaining the server for
this one list and so we have decided to retire the listserv.

I created this list as a moderated list six and a half years ago and so feel
a bit sad to see its passing, but the world has moved on from mail
reflectors to blogs, web forums and other discussion mediums.

We will be taking the server offline on the 30th September so you have a bit
of time to get anything you need from the archives

Thanks for your involvement over the last few years

Richard Blewett
CTO
DevelopMentor


I think what's more disappointing is that in turning it off they
certainly haven't spent much time thinking about an exit plan,
because there's no archive availability (the listserv is getting
turned off completely) or alternative place identified for list
participants to move to... I often think this is something that
needs to be thought about up front (and budgeted for, 
almost in some separate trust fund) especially as communities and
social platforms proliferate - it's a shame to see information
evaporate.

That said it looks like some of the long time readers of the
group are working to migrate the server away from develop mentor,
or to move onto this google
group
- be interesting to see where this goes.

On a side note I wonder how much sites like stack overflow will errode
the last remnants of mail-only technical mailing lists...
personally (while I've been beta testing it) I've found the stack
overflow concept doesn't really gel with me - but I can see it's
appeal to others - personally I prefer discussion over problem
"resolution" and the ability for a group to collectively choose
not to answer a problem (because it's but 2 clicks away on a
simple google search) - where as with the reputation system in
Stack overflow the simple/dumb/obvious questions are like crack
for the reputation kidies. 

On the same note, how much will stack overflow and similar
concepts errode organic blog discovery (which is normally while
someone is trying to find an answer to a question).... hmmm

Written on September 8, 2008