At 8:58 PM -0800 3/17/99, Dave Hayes wrote:
> A -real- list is one that no one human being can wreck. All others
> are pretenders.
Well... No, I won't go there. But at some point, perhaps it might be
fun to set up a majordomo2 system with the specific intent of
allowing people to try to crack it, the same way as has been done
with MacOS-based web servers a number of times (but without the
reward money, unless someone else is paying). It would be
illuminating. It might scare the cr@p out of us. Probably both.
> If there was some way to thread an email list and kill threads,
> this would be a viable way to handle that.
Down that road lies web-based forums, of course. With embedded list
servers. (and they're coming).
> Attempting to stop
> people from fighting OR meta-fighting is ultimately futile. If
> you succeed, you also wind up chilling interesting discussions.
(shrug). I've been known to over-chill mail lists in my time. I think
I do a good compromise these days (you live. you learn. But only if
you listen...). In all honesty, I've got a fair number of filters in
place to catch things that create these meta-fights, and they don't
seem to inhibit discussions. In fact, they're rarely invoked, because
the stuff they trap doesn't come up in normal discussions. And I've
found about 80% of the messages that are filtered and rejected end up
posted with appropriate modifications.
And instead of getting a dozen complaints a month about language, or
editing replies, or changing the digest subject, or whatever, I get
about one complaint every two or three months from someone honked at
me for actually requiring them to follow decent netiquette. I can
live with that. Anyone who's "above" following a few simple rules is
rarely a constructive addition to the mail list, anyway. Most
appreciate some gentle education, because I get many more "thanks for
catching that" notes than I do complaints.
The trick, of course, is to avoid unnecessary false positives. THOSE
honk people off. so it's better to have no filtering than bad
filtering.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq@apple.com)
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui@plaidworks.com)
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano!
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