META: Re: Improving the Extropians list

Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:37:10 -0700 (PDT)

Timothy Bates writes:
> Moderation would be very hard a lot of work, too much work to be good.

True, but it wouldn't be *your* work, would it?

> My favourite quote this week (it is reprogramming my whole brain) is from
> Douglas Hofstatder
>
> "Apathy at a local level leads to insanity at a global level"
>
> How about we simply allow local users to filter their mail better by adding
> more informative header material to each mail?

What makes you think that especially the more inane posters will be particularly diligent in classifying the material? (You also apparently forgot to put the META tag into the Subject:) And, especially, why the workload of filtering should be delegated to all list participants? Doesn't compute, spocko.

> If users are apathetic we will have an insane list, but according to
> Hofstatder that will be inevitable anyhow. If users are active, then sanity
> will have given them a mechanism via which sanity can prevail.

Point is, user won't become active -- just leave. On the other hand, properly moderated lists have shown themselves to be immune from common list degeneration pattern.

'gene