From: Mark Walker (mdwalker@quickclic.net)
Date: Thu Sep 19 2002 - 14:46:48 MDT
I have a suggestion that is a modification of one I made a few months back
on the Ex list about how to manage the list volume. Suppose a voluntary
system of categorizing messages was
instituted in terms of the relevance to transhumanism and extropianism.
H = High Relevance
M = Moderate Relevance
L = Low Relevance
To see how it would work let me cite Anders from a couple of days ago:
> "My suggestion is simply that threads that could happen on other lists do
> not really belong on this list. It is really a non-redundancy
> principle. For example, the Iraq thread seems to be
> highly redundant - clones are occuring all across the net. The computer
> security and random number threads are less unsuitable due to the
> importance (as has been pointed out) to future transhuman states and
> discussions of physical eschatology, but they are somewhat borderline. A
> discussion about nanosecurity or how to deal with rogue nations in the
> context of fast technological change would likely be very suitable. "
To employ Anders' examples:
Suppose someone starts a thread 'War with Iraq?' Since not everyone will
comply with the request for a rating, let us assume it gets posted to the
list unrated. If I reply I would change the subject heading to:
'[L] War with Iraq?'
'Random Numbers' would have the subject heading
'[M] Random Numbers'
and 'Nanosecurity' would have the subject heading
'[H] Nanosecurity'
It is true that not everyone will agree on
whether a topic is H M or L. This need not necessarily be a problem, one can
quickly learn whose judgment is closest to your own. At least initially the
system might spark a number of debates about what is and isn't relevant to
transhumanism and extropianism. To my mind this is not necessarily a bad
thing.
Some of the advantages of the system I believe are:
1. It will allow people to sort quicker through the noise--one could even
set one's filters to accept only [M] and [H] messages for example.
2. It may make people more self conscious about the purpose of the list and
whether their message is of relevance.
3. It will get around the dilemma of wanting to respond to posts without
thereby seeming to acknowledge their relevance.
The biggest disadvantage, as a little birdie (from Sweden) points out, is
that it will make archive searching more of a pain. Conceivably the same
thread could be sorted four different ways. For example:
1. War with Iraq?
2. [L] War with Iraq?
3. [M] War with Iraq?
4. [H] War with Iraq?
This could happen if the original post is unclassified and then there are
three different opinions on its relevance. I don't know if this problem
could be fixed.
If the system is adopted and proves useful the aforementioned little birdie
said that it might be possible to use list sociogram software to make a pie
graph of relative votes on a thread. And of course, we all love pie...
Let's see if spontaneous order emerges... ; )
Mark
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