From my personal email archives:

Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 22:39:56 -0800  
To: <hist-grad@[redacted].edu>
From: Andrew Berger <[redacted].edu>  
Subject: hist-grad reform  
In-Reply-To: <[redacted]>  
References: <[redacted]>  
Mime-Version: 1.0  
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed  
Sender: owner-hist-grad@[redacted].EDU  
Precedence: bulk  

Year after year one topic always generates the largest proportion of 
traffic on this list. In light of this fact I would like to propose that we 
split hist-grad into two lists:

List 1: hist-grad: whatever it is hist-grad is supposed to be

List 2: meta-hist-grad: for the discussion of what is and is not 
appropriate to be posted on hist-grad

Please send all replies to this e-mail to list 2.

Thank you

I can't remember what on-list dispute led me to send this message and I don't really want to dig through my archives to figure it out. I do remember at least one person replied, on-list, in a way that suggested they took it seriously. Splitting the list wouldn't solve the problem, they said.