[p2p-research] p2presearch Digest, Vol 19, Issue 150

[Kevin Carson]

On 5/19/09, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:
> sorry for just looking occasionally into this list, I feel that the shere
>  amount of postings makes it undreadable and proves there is no real focus.

Good comment on the LTV.

On the issue of list volume, I think you'd find the list absorbed far
less of your time and effort if you switched from digests to the
standard individual email format.  With separate emails, you can
simply look at the subject lines in your mailbox and delete all the
ones you're not interested in (and if you have gmail, you can mute the
entire "conversation," so further emails on that topic are blocked).
OTOH with digests, you have no subject differentiation, and no way of
telling what the individual messages are without going through the
entire digest.  And when a list's volume is this high and the size of
the individual digest is capped, you wind up with multiple messages
anyway; the digest format just makes it a lot harder to deal with
them.

It also creates a positive externality for the rest of us, who don't
like having to open up the digest to figure out what particular
subject a person is replying on.

In short, digest format is totally counterproductive.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html