Here's the question that was bumbling through my head while I was supposed to be working this afternoon: how do you select/collate/send the useful material from t.m.o to the mailing list, and vice versa while filtering out duplication and 'noise'?

And I think I got as far as concluding that technology can't do it. Try as we might, we can't (yet) create software that can tell Orange Box from Fatalsaint. We can spot a 'bot' at 20 paces, and eliminate them before they post. We can even pick out most spammers pretty quickly (judging by the numbers that get through I'm assuming we catch far more in the net).

But technology can't tell signal from noise in post content - even if you created an algorithm to eliminate all posts containing the words 'iphone', 'sucks' or 'fail'. For that, oddly, the best tool is still the human brain. Funny old thing, but still capable of exercises in judgement and distilling of content that defeat our wonder-machines.

So, here's a proposal: we appoint a 'minute taker' - or better still several, for both the mailing list and the forum. They divvy up the content - possibly by topic, and post regular 'minutes' to each medium.

So... to illustrate: the minute taker is tasked with cross-posting content on, say, this month's sprint.

Every few days they post to the forum:

The they'd update the mailing list

It would be a big job for a few people. One could insist that the person starting the topic keep the minutes, but that would require that everyone have both media enabled. But we have of shortage of good people around, including a few looking for ways to contribute.