Dividing The List Considered Harmful

[Ric Werme]

Drew Van Zandt profferred his $0.02: 

> If a couple of guys are posting something you're tired of hearing about on
> the list, and you don't want to do some sort of filtering to drop
> it... send all those discussing it on list an OFF-LIST polite note "Isn't
> that sort of offtopic?  The chatter's drowning out the Linux talk."

In my experience, that doesn't work all that well.  The problem is that
boorish/rabid/single-mission people just don't see themselves as
boorish/rabid/single-mission people.  Encouraging the recipients to send
off-list replies sometimes helps, since it often keeps yet more replies off
the list.  If lots of people send off-list comments (and lots of questions!)
to frequent OT posters, maybe they won't have time to post as frequently.

> In my experience, technical solutions to something that isn't a technical
> problem are unlikely to work, just as political solutions to technical
> problems are unlikely to work.

Maybe we need both, perhaps people can agree on netiquette guidelines
and some technical "encouragement" might help.

On netiquette, I generally ask myself:

1) Does this add to the discussion (sometimes I'll post when it doesn't)?

2) Have I researched this enough so that I won't be pounced on by someone
   with a free minute to check Google or other archives?  Following this
   takes quite a bit more time and reduces both the posts I make and the
   replies to my posts.  It's one of the best ways to increase the
   signal::noise ratio and decrease chit-chat.

3) Will this annoy/attack someone enough to trigger a reply?
   If so, I'll either discard the post or reword it. (I discarded my first
   post about list noise last night).  Once in a while I'll post away anyway
   and maybe apologize later.  Sometimes ya gotta be precipitate instead of
   solution!

4) If I were to recite this at a MerriLUG dinner how many rolled eyes,
   nasty looks, or responses that change the topic would I get?  If it's
   not socially welcome in public, it probably won't be on this list.

On the technical side, one problem with this list is that it's infeasible
for digest recipients to reply to a thread and preserve the thread
history, so even if Bill teaches procmail a thing or two, he may have
to keep a history of topics and count Subject matches.  At least it might
encourage people to update Subject lines.

Splitting a list often doesn't work, for all the reasons mentioned.  A
moderated list can work on some lists, e.g. the Todd Gross support list,
but wouldn't here.

One thing I thought of today that might be good is to limit people to
five posts or so per day (list admins and revered demi-gods excepted).
That way people might come to see their posts as a valuable resource and
work harder to say something valuable in each.  I'm not fond of web
forums, but some accept readers ratings.  Perhaps highly ranked posters
could get bonus posts.

All in all, I'm afraid this is another one of hundreds of threads on this
topic and ranks with unsolvable issues like the list I "offered" last
night.  We'll never solve it, but I guess as long as we can make it be less
of a problem it's worth discussing.

And some of the OT posts can have interesting benefits.  One respondent to
my post knew whose bail hearing it was, and another is an ex-coworker who
had just joined this list and was beginning to think that was a mistake.

      -Ric Werme
     "Engineers are unreasonable people." -- NH Judge John Korbey
ric at werme.8m.net                http://werme.8m.net/