[tanmoy@gita.lanl.gov: CTAN archives]

[K. Berry]

     > 1) Could one set up a mailing list where _all_ upgrades to the
     >    packages (base/packages/contrib-supported/contrib-others) will
     >    receive notification. This will at least allow me to upgrade only
    we have ctan-ann for this purpose, though its not used enough

The main announcement list I know of, and try to use consistently, is
tex-archive@math.utah.edu.  I think it would be a good thing if every
new release of anything that goes on ctan (or elsewhere!) was
accompanied by a message to tex-archive.

Aside: I could even envision some folks (me, for instance) liking an
automatically generated message -- ``the files on ctan that changed
today'' (or this week, or this month).