RFC: Make political discussion off-topic by rule (was: America ...)

[Will Johnson]

I have to disagree, and it may be due to how I read the list.  I get the "Daily Digest" format of the list.  I really don't care if there are 2, 5, 10 or 50 messages in a day, I scan through the headers and go to just the messages on topics of interest to me.

I view message boards like this one as a place for people with a similarity of experience to gather, and then discuss things which are of interest to them.  Not every topic will be of interest to every person, and of course the MAJORITY of discussion will be on the topic where the greatest similarity of experience exists.  But clearly, there have been enough replies to this topic to show it's of interest.  If it is not so to you, delete it (or skip over it) when you see the subject line.

The old argument "Well, with my 1200 baud modem, it takes forever to download these crap messages I don't want to read" is bogus in the high-speed world of today's internet.  You're basically saying that you want people to only discuss things of interest to YOU, purely for the convenience of not having to make your own choices as to which postings to read.

Trust me, in my experience we're FAR better off with an open list like this than we would be with a moderated one.  Moderated lists tend to suffer from several issues:  First, slow response time, as one waits for the moderator or moderators to approve messages.  Second, if you have enough moderators to take down the first issue, now you have a certain arbitrariness in that if a topic on the fringe of on-topic is read by ONE moderator he/she may let it through and another may reject it.

And finally, I find most moderated lists become so cold and technically boring that all but a few people depart the list, which sort of limits the effectiveness of the list as a discussion tool.

My two cents.  Your mileage may vary.  Some assembly required.  Do not taunt happy fun ball.  For external use only.  <your favorite cliche here>

* Will.