Re: META: Rules without rulers

Samael (samael@dial.pipex.com)
Sat, 9 Jan 1999 23:12:13 -0000

-----Original Message-----
From: Technotranscendence <neptune@mars.superlink.net>

>All of the following is IMHO. The value judgments here are my own and
>might not agree with those of the list-owner or its other members. No
>insult is intended to anyone. Here goes...

None taken :->

>The fist is a post per day per member maximum. This could be, say,
>three posts per day. By doing this, I think people who chime in on
>everything would choose what to respond to more wisely.

Hmm, I can respond to an opinion on Dyson, or the comment about singularities, or the one regarding new methods of uploading - but not all of them! Which one is more important! Damn! I already replied to a post this morning, so I can't reply to this one that's just arrived in response to it!

>The second is a limit on the size of each post. This enforce trimming
>posts, so that members don't quote the whole post, but only the part
>they wish to respond to.

I try to do this, but frequently (especially in a cogently argued post) there is not enough context unless you include several layers of argument back to the original post

>A problem with this is that combined with the post per day limit, the
>length of a member's daily contribution would be very limited. Even
>so, if someone has something lenthy to post, he or she could post
>a (temporary?) URL with the material or ask members to email him
>or her for copies of it.

I'm not sure what the problem with list verbiage is. I would like to try and keep subject lines relevant when topics change during conversation (so people can ignore those threads they aren't interested in), but I'm interested in seeing as many opinions as possible, so I don;t see a problem with many posts. Similarly with emails, I'd prefer that each one was long, but stand-alone (so that when it arrives I can read it as a single argument and not have to go back through my deleted folder to try and find the email it's a reply to in order to understand it).

I do think that sometimes this sort of thing might work better as a newsgroup (we do appear to have the volume) and if I had a permanent connection to the net (as soon as ADSL comes in) I would run a news server with a couple of news groups on it.

Comments from the floor (walls, ceilings, etc.)?

Samael