Re: Lee Corbin's Goodbye

From: Dossy (dossy@panoptic.com)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2003 - 10:06:58 MDT

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    On 2003.08.18, Mark Walker <mark@permanentend.org> wrote:
    > We have two choices: either no list moderation, which leads to an
    > unacceptable degradation of list quality; or some form of coercion is
    > used to enforce list rules.

    Add my personal preference and a third choice:

    We create two lists. One is a discussion list and is wholly and
    completely unmoderated. The other is a moderated (announce-only style)
    list, where only a few people can send to the list.

    Generally, everyone is encouraged to subscribe to the moderated list,
    which should be low traffic (less than 10 messages a day). Anyone who
    wishes to participate in discussion subscribes to the discussion list.

    Discussion threads start on the discussion list, where everyone can put
    in their two cents. When the thread reaches a point where it's either
    interesting or has terminated, someone (not necessarily a participant in
    the thread -- the volunteer can be anyone) then summarizes the
    highlights of the thread that might be interesting. They then send that
    summary to one of the moderators of the moderated list who collate the
    day's summaries, then sends it out to the moderated list.

    This way, folks who don't want to (or can't) sift through the noise get
    to at least see what they might have missed. Then, they can optionally
    go back through some threaded message archive and read up on the actual
    thread if they want deeper detail.

    This is similar to what folks like Gina are doing with the Nanogirl
    News, but would be specific to the content represented in the Extropians
    mailing list.

    This is a widely used technique for many mailing lists and Usenet
    newsgroups and works well, as long as there are enough volunteers who
    summarize worthwhile threads.

    -- Dossy

    -- 
    Dossy Shiobara                       mail: dossy@panoptic.com 
    Panoptic Computer Network             web: http://www.panoptic.com/ 
      "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
        folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70)
    


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