Suggestion: A wiki page for all answered "Why don't you ...?"

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

I've been lurking in this list for quite some while. It's very 
interesting too see all creative proposal, and always very refreshing to 
read the well-formulated replies (often by Brian, but many others 
contribute as well) on why this-or-that is not feasible.

I think the list archive contains a treasure trove of information about 
possible language features and ways Java development could have gone, 
but did not -- and with good explanations of why that was not as good 
idea as it looked in the first place.

However, this treasure is hard to find. If you follow the list, you see 
it pop up from time to time, but if you don't, there is no easy way to 
get to this. This tend to lead to some popular ideas being suggested 
over and over again (perhaps not as much here, as on other channels, 
like Reddit).

I think it would be great if these suggestion, together with the 
reasoning provided for not implementing it, were collected on a web 
site. The wiki seems to be a good place, but there are of course many 
other possible solutions.

I have contemplated doing this myself for quite some time, going through 
the mail archive and extracting the relevant discussions, but I always 
have more pressing things to do, and it is not likely I will ever be 
able to do it. So I'm throwing this idea up in the air. I realize many 
other are in the same situation as I am, but perhaps there are some 
interested readers out there in the community that has more time on 
their hands and that can help with such a task?

/Magnus