Well i'm not meaning to be a wet blanket but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of places to discuss "this language is better than that language because of this or that feature"   other than a common lisp - specific email list. 

It seems self-evident to me that a "professional common lisp" mailing list is meant for those who are working in Common Lisp professionally (either out of necessity or preference), and wish to discuss various tips/tricks/practicalities of continuing to do so.  Discussions about how to introduce Common Lisp to youngsters (some of whom may become the next generation of "common lisp professionals") may also be appropriate. But discussions about "hey, let's teach youngsters programming: now let's discuss what non-commonlisp trendy languages are the cool/smart kids using these days so that we (common lisp professional) may put resources into a coding camp or whatever"  seem to run counter to any purpose of a mailing list such as this and moreover smacks of a cuckoldish mentality. 

Now, if we are discussing other languages from the perspective of "how can we co-opt some of the nice features of these other languages into common lisp through open-source libraries or some future version of the cl standard" then I feel the discussion would be appropriate here. But that does not seem to be the thrust of this current thread (is it?) 

I also should display some humility and perhaps my initial comment on this matter was a bit short and haughty; I apologize if it came through that way. After all, I did not establish this list and I'm not sure who did -- if they are still around perhaps they can chime in with an opinion?  

I am however associated with the Foundation which runs common-lisp.net which runs this mailing list so I do feel qualified to express an opinion here.