For a long time now eclectic has been lying fallow. I’ve just been able to keep up to date with XML-DEV on a daily basis and keep it maintained the way I used to. A combination of factors including being much busier at work (now managing a team) and at home (now a father, and soon to be so again).
However I think the main reason is that the conversations seem to be endlessly spiralling around several recurring themes (“permathreads”). This makes for very tedious reading as the trenches rarely shift very far in either direction. This has greatly reduced my tolerance for keeping up to date with the list. In the past I’ve tried to remain as impartial as possible, but once you’ve blogged about a topic for the nth time it starts to get tedious fast.
So I’m declaring eclectic to be dead. I’m not longer going to be a daily reader of XML-DEV but will stop by the archives occasionally and report on any interesting topics that I see.
Sadly however, a brief look into this months archives sees threads on XSLT vs CSS, Namespaces, and even one about Permathreads. So slim pickings for the moment.
It’s a shame really as I’ve learnt a great deal from monitoring XML-DEV over the last few years. I think the community has matured to the point where the interesting stuff is now happening on the “fringes” — separate dedicated mailing lists or other shared spaces. And thats where I intend to keep lurking for the moment.
Many thanks to Userland for providing a free hosting service for so long.
If anyone is interested in taking the content from eclectic, you can download eclectic.root (a Frontier database export of the site)
XML-DEV and eclectic
Published
Lost Boy 
Good night, eclectic. We hardly knew ye.
The XML-DEV mailing list has long been a font of juicy markup-related discussion and development. This is a good thing if you’re really into things like XML databases and discussions about the Infoset. Of course, when you’re a young programmer just get…
Personally I think that most email lists tend to get ‘taken over’ by people who think they own the list; understandable behavior considering regular posters can spend hours fixing other peoples problems.
Even though i’ve written 500+ emails for xslt or exslt list, I certainly don’t consider the list as my property (hehe, we all know its David / Jeni / Mike ); also I am quite apart from the community as my day job is in a completely different sector of computer programming, xslt is a hobby. To a certain degree some days I spend answering those ‘google’ questions, or just push URL’s out to newbies et al. On the rare days, where I am not so busy, I post more involved answers. In this way I learn more, or reinforce the knowledge I already have.
I think that xml-dev folks should emulate the good folk over at xslt-list ( most sub to each list in any event ), and spend 80% of the time answering questions, and drop the esoteric debate or the 40 email threads. Possibily they might fork the list, so that those who want to debate the finer points of the well known perma-threads have a forum…of course that will probably cause a perma-thread of its own.
cheers, jim fuller
I stopped reading xml-dev about a year ago for the same reasons. It was impossible to post anything without tripping over someone’s landmine wire.
There’s a lot of exciting things happening with XML, things which I dreamed of just four years ago, like WS-Security, WS-Transaction, XQuery, and BPEL. XML has come a long way. Four years ago, my coworkers looked at me funny when I suggested we pass XML across machine boundaries. Now it’s taken for granted.
It’s too bad that the posters on xml-dev don’t talk about emerging XML technologies. It would be so much more interesting. XML Schema and namespaces is so 2000. I’ve moved on.
Long time eclectic reader– was away for awhile, got back in the country and realized it was gone. I definitely agree with the reasoning– there seems to be little dev happening at xml-dev these days… it should be xml-deb. I just wanted to give a big thanks to you (and your family!) and compliment you on the fine work you have contributed.
Cheers,
Jeff Rafter (Loyal fan…)