I was told that the CLUG listserver maintainer is long gone, however. So changes to CLUG are probably not advisable / impossible.
It's majordomo. Youcan control it remotely, but nobbing over the global settings isn't possible.
Keeping UseNet discipline and self-moderation is probably best for clug - just be (self) disciplined about threads? An FAQ can be supported if the anarchy / total freedom approach breaks down irretrievably.
I'd say
- very small mailing lists don't work so well because no-one has the information others need
- medium sized mailing lists work well, because the information's available and people pay attention to conversations they're not actively participating in, so that the same questions aren't repeated over and over; and
- in big mailing lists, there's too much noise to continually pay attention, which means that people with answers give up replying to questions and others don't spot the useful information in the flow of traffic, leading to the same things being asked over and over.
Given Wells's theorem of mailing lists, I think that a CLUG+ALUG list should be about the right size to get useful discussions going and that (judging by the volume of technical traffic, as opposed to 'anyone coming out this Sunday') the CLUG list alone isn't quite big enough.