RE: Brad's policies

[KMcLauchlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On the topic of too many "junk" posts to "the other" 
Framer's list:
I suppose I wouldn't be allowed to post such comments 
on the other list, but, anybody who's feeling brave 
can forward with my blessing.  :-)

The Copy Editors' List, CE-L has a (partial) solution 
that I like. They have some standard categories, with 
some standard abbreviations to use in the Subject line.
CEL-ists are a tremendously chatty bunch, but no 
list-member needs to be bothered by topics or categories 
s/he doesn't like.  

Surely it couldn't be too hard to come up with a 
list of useful categories into which most FrameUsers posts 
would fall? That could include one or two "catch-all" 
categories, like :HUMOR and :MISC or :WOT (way off 
topic).

The rule would be that you start the Subject of 
each post with one of the category abbreviations, 
followed by your "real" subject.

Subj: :WOT - There's a car in the lot with lights on

Everybody has mail readers capable of applying 
filtering rules, based on the occurrence of specific 
character strings in the Subject line.  Don't they?

Brad probably wouldn't need to interfere -- simple 
peer pressure would keep people using the categories 
if they were useful. Nobody would feel censored; 
they'd merely have to label their stuff.

You could even have a category for dumb newbie 
questions that turn out to be real posers, after 
all, so that they could bypass the usual filters.
So, for the first few rounds of mailing, the only 
people who would see a message with :ToC in the 
header would be people who like to help newbies. 
Then, when the problem turned out to be a "real" 
one, one of those old-timers could re-post with 
:TUFF in front of :ToC... in front of the rest of 
the Subject line... or some such.

Subj::TUFF:ToC - My ToC inverts halfway down the page

After all, the people who are complaining about 
seeing the same newbie crud over and over must 
have the mental capacity to create keywords and 
categories for those "same old" posts that they 
abhor, don't they?
The list-owner could compile the supplied category 
abbreviations into one of his rules, posted as an 
"in case y'all were wondering" monthly Admin message 
to the list, and in the "Welcome to the List" message.

The number of posts would remain the same, I suppose, 
over on FrameUsers, but those who don't want to 
see most of them would not need to -- their mail-
reader filtering rules would toss all but the real 
gems and posers... to which they could then respond 
with a sage... "Gee, I don't know.  I never 
figured that one out either..."      Ahem!...   :-)

Hmm.  Yeah.  Some people would thus never see 
anything but single messages on any topic (the 
original request) followed by deathly silence).
The rest of us would see the general fooferaw, 
but ... nicely labelled for when we are pressed 
for time.

Well, *I* like it, so there!

Cheers,

/k

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Emory [mailto:danemory@primenet.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 12:33 PM
> To: William Swallow; Free Framers
> Subject: Re: Brad's policies
> 
> 
> At 09:57 AM 3/1/00 -0500, William Swallow wrote:
> >You asked us to speak up and I took your offer...
> >
> >If you want to run your own free list, go for it. With big lists
> >comes the need for some measure of control. Otherwise it'd 
> be hard to spot
> >the on-topic posts.
> ======================================================
> But the problem is that the quality of list service and related list
> management issues are legitimate topics. He suppresses any 
> posts to the list
> that relate to these topics, and, though he says the proper 
> course of action
> is to contact him off-list, he ignores those off-list complaints, and
> regards them as "hate mail" (his words in a post he made today). 
> =============================================================
> >I run several lists myself, and one is quickly growing. 
> Sure, I find the
> >need to police it every now and again. It's the only way to 
> keep things on
> >topic. And ya know what, most people are thankful for that 
> policing, as most
> >people have a decent amount of work to get done and can't 
> afford the time to
> >sift through volumes of garbage to get to a small nugget of 
> information that
> >may or may not help them.
> ====================================================================
> But that's exactly the situation now with the BradList. The 
> vast majority of
> the posts are garbage--recurring posts about a relatively 
> small group of
> problems ad nauseum: How to generate a TOC or index, conditional text
> issues, autonumbering problems, problems with producing PDF, 
> issues about
> which graphic formats are best, "fuzzy" graphics, etc. And 
> the people who
> raise these recurrent topics are failing to find the 
> "nuggets" that would
> answer their questions before they post them to the list 
> because it's too
> difficult for them to weed through all the chaff.
> 
> The vast majority of the 2400 BradList subscribers are 
> lurkers who never
> post anything. Presumably, they weed through the posts 
> looking for those
> nuggets. The second category includes the ones whose posts 
> mainly ask for
> help (usually help on the recurrent topics described above). 
> The third (and
> smallest) category are people knowledgeable about FrameMaker 
> who are looking
> for the occasional new nugget of information, and who also 
> are willing to
> offer help to those in the second category. The people in this third
> category are also the ones who produce most of the nuggets.
> 
> If the relatively small number of people in that third category 
> start to revolt (by unsubscribing or becoming lurkers instead of
> participants), the list collapses, because there are no more 
> nuggets, and no
> more help for the ones who need it.
> 
>      ====================
>      | Nullius in Verba |
>      ====================
> Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
> FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
> Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
> 10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
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