Again, noise ratio

[Neil Schneider]

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,  Stewart Stremler had to walk into mine on Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 03:55:30PM -0800 and say:
> Moderation has its place, but frequently, a moderated forum does not
> retain the interest of a large group of people. If all you want out of
> the list is the simple question/answer format with a high S/N ratio,
> then by all means choose moderation. (The newbie list might be a good
> candidate for this... the moderator can redirect off-topic irrelevent
> answers to the kooler, or advanced topics to the regular list, etc.)

Short attentions spans?

> I always thought that the [Kooler] (and by extension, [Newbie]) tags
> were a good solution, and that the technical solution would be to
> offer pre-filtered versions for those who find [Koolers] annoying,
> or who only want to see [Newbie] topics.

The alternate list were created to solve a problem. We were driving away
new users who hadn't yet attained the technical skills to do their own
filtering, and therefore were dropping from the list, to avoid the high
volumes of mail, that was overwhelming them. They can't ask questions, and
we can't answer if they're not on the list.

>  
> Failing that, an actual move to a newsgroup -- and there's sufficient
> traffic in the lists to support a few newsgroups -- would be a good
> idea, as newsreaders have long ago handled the problem of forum-hopping
> discussions, and offer quick and easy filtering capabilities within 
> the reach of even newbies.

That is a problem. Apparently some members of the list refused to
cooperate with the solution, probably because they didn't choose it. Since
some refuse to take off topic discussions to the kooler list, again we see
the regular list degrading to a high signal to noise ratio.

I'm not interested in taking up the job of moderating the lists. And I
don't really want to see them moderated. However, I think it's
inconsiderate and undisciplined for some people to refuse to cooperate. I
haven't been posting much lately, because I've been busy, and because I
have little to say. My mother used to tell me, "the empty wagon makes the
most noise". I can think of more than a few posters that applies to.

> > again. It is an invitation to types of management, and associated
> > disagreements, where none need exist. It is, in fact, a bureaucracy.
>  
> Interesting viewpoint. I'm not sure that I disagree. It is, in fact, 
> a compelling point. 

Only if you don't have enough self-discipline to cooperate.

> The RISKS folks talk about this on a regular basis. It doesn't matter
> what the technology is to solve $PROBLEM, if it doesn't work *with*
> people, they'll subvert it, ignore it, misuse it, and quite often make
> $PROBLEM worse than it was before.

Just to prove that the solution won't work, if nothing else.

-- 
Neil Schneider 				    pacneil at linuxgeek.net
					   http://www.paccomp.com
Key fingerprint = 67F0 E493 FCC0 0A8C 769B  8209 32D7 1DB1 8460 C47D
.. Windows XP... "most reliable Windows ever." To me, this is like 
saying that asparagus is "the most articulate vegetable ever." 
				-- Dave Barry