Re: Mailing List Quality (Was: Certainty, Experiments & Facts)

Greg Stock (gregstock@earthlink.net)
Tue, 1 Oct 1996 22:21:01 -0700 (PDT)


Several people have mentioned that the traffic on this list is getting so
heavy that they don't have time to deal with it. I feel the same way. There
have been many interesting threads and ideas on this list, and I hate to
unsubscribe but there are ridiculous numbers of posts to wade through,
especially if one is away for a few days.

One reason the quality of the list was so high in the past, I believe, was
the ability of a subscriber to do sophisiticated filtering so as to only see
the threads and/or posters considered worthwhile. Now we have to do this in
our own mail programs, which means downloading everything.

There is definitely a point of diminishing returns. Max, is there any chance
of charging some fee and getting hold of a list management program that can
do filtering like the old one did? If some solution isn't developed for this
problem, this list is going to rapidly degrade, because people who are only
peripherally involved will be forced to disengage.

Gregory Stock
gregstock@earthlink.net, stock@ess.ucla.edu