Alex wrote: > > On Tue, 5 Nov 1996, Thomas Katzlberger wrote: > > > Do I sense the beginnings of a circle-newbie mailing list? > > > > I would vote for it. > > > > How about this idea: > > > > Make 2 lists, publish the first one (e.g this one at the web pages) > > and make a second one Circle Advanced <circleplus@cspo.queensu.ca>. > > I remember the last time something like this tried to happen. If I recall > correctly, the same posts ended up getting posted to both mailing lists, > and it was a total an utter waste of time. That's fairly predictable. I think the comments about the mailing list having too much traffic are correct, but I see several problems... First, every copy of circle mud has pointer to the old mailing list (which was obsoleted a couple of months back...). This seems to have encouraged people to indiscriminately subscribe to the list whether they need it or not. Second, I think a lot of people are just not exercising good judgement in the posting of new messages or replying to certain kinds of messages. In many cases, the "help!!!" messages are requests for information that could be easily determined by five minutes of work by the original poster. Chances are, by the time someone responds, he will have solved his problem. So I would recommend that people spend some time with their problem *before* posting to the list... and likewise I would recommend that others don't bother responding to that type of question. Third, a moderated list, while cutting down on the noise, might also dampen the signal. It is easy to just play the heavy-handed censor and delete anything that looks dumb. So easy to squash unpopular points of view, or even POV's that might cast aspersions on you or your pet projects. (The imaginary.com mailing lists come to mind.) Whereas it takes a *lot* of time to run a high-quality moderated mailing list without stifling debate. See comp.dcom.telecom as an example of this; the moderator is basically moderating full time and relies on corporate sponsorship to pay for his time. It has good debates because the moderator studies *each and every message*. Anyone here up to that? I didn't think so... I think a more realistic solution is to have a list that is more selective about the people on it, and then leave that list unmoderated. The only problem is, how to determine who gets on that list without turning it into a good ol' boys club. > I would be interested in > trying to figure something out like this, but the only way I can even > conceive of splitting them would be to have a moderated 'ideas' list and > the current unmoderated 'circlemud' list... of course, at the same time, > it could even be conceivable to have the 'ideas' list as a generic mud > list and not just narrowed down to specifically CircleMUDs. > > Any comments on something like this? I can't promise anything for the > next few weeks, being swamped with work and having an important final > coming up soon (the pass or fail out kind)... but comments and further > ideas are more than welcome. A high quality moderated mailing list is out of the question, IMO. See above. -- "A rare instance of a solid period, end of story, case-closed moment took place in the first presidential debate when Bob Dole croaked his URL to a bemused electorate. If the web were ever cool, if it could even lay claim to the illusion of cool, it died that moment. At some moment between Dole's muttering of 'www' and his failure to include the dot between 'dolekemp' and 'org,' the web became conclusively, incontrovertibly lame." -- Suck +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ: | | http://cspo.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list_faq.html | +-----------------------------------------------------------+
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