20 years of lua-l

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

The Lua mailing list was created 20 years ago, on Feb 20th, 1997.
Over 125000 messages have been posted since then.

Traffic in lua-l has decreased in the last 5 years, after a steady
increase in the first 15 years:
	http://www.lua.org/lua-l-stats.html

Perhaps this reflects a maturity in the Lua community. Or perhaps it
reflects the existence of other channels for asking questions, such
as stackoverflow and pt.stackoverflow:
	http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/lua
	http://pt.stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/lua

The number of subscribers has remained stable near 2900 for the last few
years. (Apparently, Mailman was miscounting this number in 2014.)
	http://www.lua.org/lua-l-stats.html#subscribers

I still find it pleasantly surprising that, for a list of its size and
age, the signal-to-noise ratio remains quite high, mainly because of
those who generously share their expertise with the whole Lua community.

I trust we can keep lua-l friendly and welcoming, and full of good advice.
On behalf of the Lua team, I thank you all for joining and helping others.

What we said in the HOPL paper 10 years ago is still quite relevant today:

   We have been fortunate that the Lua list is very friendly and at the
   same time very technical. The list has become the focal point of the
   Lua community and it has been a source of motivation for improving Lua.

--lhf