Is "General" too general?

[skolenik]

I understand the breakdown of Stata vs Mata. But may be there should be a further breakdown within/instead of "General", may be into "Data management", "Statistical procedures", "Graphics", "Programming" and "Other - general" ? The general forum will get overwhelmed very quickly, and the forum usefulness will diminish very quickly (methinks).

Stas

[Maarten Buis]

We have thought about that. One of the problems was to find a reasonable sub-division. Another was that posting in the wrong forum would just be extra way in which a new member could "trip up". In the end we decided to keep things as they are for now. After all, it worked for the old Statalist. After the forum has run for a while, we can alway re-evaluate that decision.

[skolenik]

Thanks, Maarten. And by "we" you mean?..

[Maarten Buis]

The Committee

[Maarten Buis]

Nothing mysterious, really:

When I told Bill Gould about the the retirement of Bill Mahoney, he and I put together a committee to find an alternative. That committee was
Bill Gould
Kit Baum
Maarten Buis
Nick Cox
Phil Schumm
and me.

[skolenik]

Thanks, @Maarten.

[Marcello Pagano]

That is not the royal "we"!!
Another possibility is to look into tagging. That is, leave the sub-forums as is, but each new thread can choose one of a small number of classifying tags in the lab el, like the ones listed by Stas. That way, all listings are available for the general peruser, as we now have, but the directed peruser can pick and choose.

See "Usage of Tags", below.