4.5.3. How to let a mailing list run itself

A mailing list is the core of any active community that gets things done. It is the equivalent to having everyone in the same office all the time. The functionality has not been duplicated, replicated, or replaced with any other technology in more than twenty years. News service is arguably better, but mailing lists are ubiquitous.

It's not hard to run a mailing list, in fact the best ones really run themselves. In order to get it to that state:

Everything must be discussed on the list.
If you break rule 1, you must make sure that whatever the discussion was, the details and results are published on the list
- This happens often, so it is incumbent that decisions come back to the list from IRC, phone calls, f2f meetings