[birt-pmc] BIRT Newsgroup 10,000

[Scott Rosenbaum <scottr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Gentleman,

The BIRT newsgroup is at 7,400 messages and should cross through the 
10,000 message mark sometime in late June / early July.   According to 
the Eclipse Project Dashboard, we are the only project getting four 
green lights for newsgroup.  We are averaging about 50 new newsgroup 
posts per day, with a fairly consistent response rate.  Fortunately, 
much of the newsgroup coverage is done by volunteers. 

Unfortunately, the result of all this success is that the newsgroup is 
so large that it is pretty difficult to find the information that one 
needs.  It is great as a place to get a question answered, but it is 
difficult to use as a source of information.  I wonder if there are 
steps that we can take to organize or annotate the newsgroup that can 
add more value to the messages that are on the newsgroup. 

I know the first answer would be to add some sub-headings to the group, 
so instead of having one big bucket of posts we had a number of smaller 
buckets that were logically arranged by subject matter.  I think that 
this might be a good idea, but I am not sure that this really solves the 
problem.  It is a short term solution at any level. 

I think a preferable method would to be able to somehow tag the 
newsgroup messages with meta-data about the posts and then be able to 
expose the information about the posts.  I am thinking something like 
del.icio.us might be appropriate. 

My questions for all of you:
   - Do you have any experience with the management/organization of 
large newsgroups?
   - Do you know of anyone that might be a good reference on this?
   - Do any of you use del.icio.us and have any feedback on its usage?
   - Has anyone heard of any promising technology for the management of 
newsgroup information?

My goal is to have some type of organizational structure that we can put 
on the BIRT newsgroup in place before we cross through the 10,000 post mark.

Scott