[p2p-research] p2presearch Digest, Vol 19, Issue 153

[M. Fioretti]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 17:32:57 PM +0700, Michel Bauwens wrote:

> Second: if you want discipline in the subject heading, why not
> create a set of volunteers, who would adapt the subject headings
> manually, since people usually click reply, once corrected, it would
> continue ... Everybody could do this job say for a week, so it
> wouldn't be much of a burden,

Michel,

in all friendship, and without anymosity, really:

on this list I already spend enough time whenever I compose a reply,
to fix things which make many people waste quite more time (and money,
if on a metered connection) than vague or untagged subjects. The
reason why I tend to not even open most replies here is not vagueness
of subjects, or the NUMBER of messages, is the difficulty of keeping
track of the flow.

Also, I have already spent enough time here trying to explain why
consistently following some simple rules would greatly speed up list
"processing" and engage more people in the conversations. Please dont'
be offended, but considering my success so far, OK, but frankly I
don't feel like participating in other policing efforts.

In any case, that is just me. There is a reason why, regardless of
ought email should be formatted, I don't think subject tags would work
here, and it's really nobody's fault. The [p2p-research] string is no
serious problem, we can keep it or leave it.

But, as I already said:

> this list is so (rightly!)  interdisciplinary that a) it'd be almost
> impossible to give less than 2/3 tags to most messages, b) there
> would be atrocious flamewars, sooner or later, about which tags
> ought to have been prepended to a certain subject.

on a technical support list it may work, but here... just remember all
the recent hassle about what "keeping" (in a bank or under a cushion)
or "interest" or "money" mean. Do you want to risk quarrels like that
every time somebody feels somebody else's choice of a subject tag
wasn't right, or new ones should be adopted?

Besides... a list like this only attracts people with high education
(formal or not it doesn't matter) or in any case used to read and
write lots of stuff a bit more difficult than what Paris Hilton wore
last week. Are we seriously saying that we can't make an effort to
write subjects that convey the topic of a message without tags?

Marco
-- 
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84