[BioC] Members Only field removed

["Hüsing, Johannes"]

> Thanks to the efforts of Martin Maechler for the mailing 
> lists hosted on
> his site, the vast majority of spam messages has been removed.  

This is great news. Kudos to Martin!

[...]
> 
> I set the list to members only posting last summer in response to the
> spam, but given the lower frequency - unless there is general 
> wailing and
> gnashing of teeth - I'm going to remove that flag.  

*wail* *gnash*

I would like to have people who want to participate 
on this mailing list at least to take the effort and 
subscribe to it, to be ready to return the helpfulness
when they've gathered more experience.

If someone wants to use this list as a read-only forum, 
they can use the Web interface. I admire the openness 
and patience of the Bioconductors, -semiconductors, 
and engine drivers who answer even the most basic questions
on installation and analysis. But I would loathe the 
idea that someone asking for somebody else's time to 
find an answer they have not the time to find out by
themselves, read the answer over the Web interface, and 
are not seen again.

Would it be too much to ask for if Jeff is replaced by 
an automated answer of the mailing list owner inviting the
caller to join the list? It might deter potential users
but keeps the signal-to-noise ratio for everybody else 
lower. 

At the moment I consider Bioconductor much less of a 
point-click product than its designers plan it to be. 
Using it requires some effort on user's side. Subscribing
to a mailing list causes less problems than almost 
everything else.

Cheers


Johannes