maybe I am misunderstanding, but are you telling me that the weeklyOSM team tried to achieve the widest audience for the newsletter by subscribing local lists?
why not grabbing the subscription lists for all newsletters, grouping them by language, and “forcibly” subscribing people to the newsletter? after all, what has been done now is also a forced subscription.
the advantage would be that people would: (1) receive a first message announcing the “courtesy” subscription; (2) receive the newsletter just once per language; (3) be able to unsubscribe the weeklyOSM (if felt annoyed by it) without needing unsubscribe the local mailing lists.
who knows sometime the standard distribution of the weekly will be more than a link.