Re: Experiments on Mailing Lists

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 6:38 PM -0800 1/4/97, Greg Broiles wrote:

>I think that a "3 posts per person per day" rule might produce interesting
>results; at least from my perspective, people who send many messages (> 5,
>or so) per day usually don't have anything of substance to say and I
>frequently skip all of their posts. It would also encourage people to avoid
>the "Me, too" or "I think you're an idiot" messages which can just as
>easily be sent privately or not at all. Implementing such a rule would be
>disproportionately burdensome technically and politically, so I'm not
>seriously suggesting that we implement it, but I do think it's useful to
>think of "fewer, better" posts as a goal.

Is this 3 per day _on average_, or _peak_? (I was quiet for Xmas and NYE,
so I built up a "credit" of about 21 posts, of which I still have some left
:-))

Seriously, this rule was also tried by the Extropians, with little useful
effect.

While the goal of "fewer, but better" posts is a noble one, mechanical
rules such as are implied by quotas are a bad idea. For various reasons.

Most of my posts are reasonable long ones (is this also a violation of a
policy Greg would support?), and I try to completely avoid short, "me too,"
rejoinders or the typical net.repartee that so pollutes other lists.

(If you think our list is bad, you ought to see lists which are completely
dominated by one-line witticisms and inside jokes....)

Frankly, some of us have more time and interest in posting to this list
than some others have. As I like to say, "for various reasons." Clearly all
1200+ subscribers cannot post 3 messages a day and have the list survive;
that some posters post many more than 3, some post 3 or fewer, and the vast
majority post none at all is completely unsurprising. Attempts to
mechanically limit the number of peak posts to some arbitrary limit,
without taking into account other factors, will backfire badly.

--Tim May


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
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