Re: META: Dwindling List Membership

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Jun 11 1999 - 07:31:13 MDT


Eugene Leitl <eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> writes:

> I suggested to Max creating an extropians-moderated. I think he wanted
> to talk to Greg Burch about it first.
>
> I promise to be a _very_ fashistoid moderator.

I spoke with Alexander Bard after TransVision about list maintenance,
and he made some good points. He is running a list for interesting
Swedish people of all kinds. It has been running for several years,
and despite occasional fluctuations it works. But Bard pointed out
that this is due to maintenance: he keeps notes for interesting topics
to drop into the list when there is a lull, and tries to moderate it
when it gets too busy or there are holidays - so that people are not
overwhelmed when they get back. In addition, he keeps a strict control
over membership - from time to time he ruthlessly throws out boring,
distruptive or silent people ("It is time for the yearly
autumn-purge!"). Maybe this is a bit too strict for a moderated
extropians list, but he has a very good point about viewing a list as
something that needs to be gardened - both nurtured and kept free from
weeds.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y


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