OK, so it looks like SIG's will be well received by TCLUG.  Currently,
we have 525 people listed on the TCLUG membership page.  This may not
reflect the active participation of the group, but it's a good metric to
start from.  We're big!  It's time for TCLUG SIG's!

In truth, we already have an informal SIG, the tclug-devel list, or more
formally now, the Developer's SIG.  Since I started the ball rolling,
and I'm trying to organize the TCLUG BSP, I'll volunteer to Chair the
Debian SIG.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAIL: THE LIST
===============================
I remember reading once that Mailman 2.1.x had topic filters.  Here's
the description from the NEWS file:

    - Topic Filters
        o A new feature has been added called "Topic Filters".  A list
          administrator can create topics, which are essentially
          regular expression matches against Subject: and Keyword:
          headers (including such pseudo-headers if they appear in the
          first few lines of the body of a message).

          List members can then `subscribe' to various topics, which
          allows them to filter out any messages that don't match a
          topic, or to filter out any message that does match a
          topic.  This can be useful for high volume lists where not
          everyone will be interested in every message.

          This work was sponsored by Control.com

I think this would work well and coincide with Sam's suggestion of
forums.  I did find at least one website[1] that describes using this
feature of Mailman[2].

In practice, we should be able to specify a keyword in the "Subject:" or
"Keywords:" headers.  List members can then "subscribe" to certain topic
filters.  For example, we typically use OT or OFF-TOPIC to signify
non-Linux topics.  These filters would allow users to block these posts.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAIL: THE WEBSITE
==================================
I suppose we should have a SIG's page listing each SIG, their Chairs and
officers, etc.  References on topics to subscribe to...  Appropriate
Links of Interest for the SIG.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAIL: TCLUG FORMALIZATION
==========================================
Should we formalize TCLUG a bit?  Add Official Officer Positions? ;-)
President, President-Elect, Secretary, Member-at-Large?  Should we
constitutionalize things loosely around these positions, describing
election procedures?  i.e. Using Debian's Condorcet election system?
Etc.  (NOTE: I am not proposing TCLUG as an NPO.  Let's avoid that for a
while.)

References
==========
1. http://www.esosoft.com/support/mailinglist/mailman/topics.html
2. http://www.list.org

-- 
Chad Walstrom <chewie at wookimus.net>           http://www.wookimus.net/
           assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */

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