Re: Metadiscussion & splitting lists

[Tom Gardner <tgg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Firstly, thanks for doing such a marvellous job so far.

Is the the daily digest too large? My answer: "yes but". 

I feel that some of the threads might be more appropriately carried on by 
personal e-mail. But any heavy-handed attempt to enforce my opinions would 
spoil the character of the list, and that would be a shame. 

Should we split the list into separate sub-lists? Definitely not:
	1) serendipity is an important reason for me reading the list
	2) who decides the sub-lists' subjects, and what happens when I can't 
	   decide which sub-list my message fits into
	3) there's the possibility that someone might start policing the 
	   sub-lists to ensure they are "on-subject". Ugh.

Solutions:
	1) none
	2) don't have fixed sublists; allow anyone to start a separate 	   
	   sub-list on a topic of their choosing, and responses are appended 
	   to the appropriate sub-list. Of course, this is exactly the 	   
	   technique used in notes groups, only the term "sublist" is 	   
	   replaced by "thread". The technique works well as a means of 
	   ignoring uninteresting conversations.
	3) I'll ignore this one; we're all civilised

It might be possible to simulate (2) by:
	- deferring all messages until the end of the day, and then clumping 
	  the messages according to topic before they are mailed out. Loss of 
	  spontaneity would not concern me.
	- the digest contains a _numbered_ list of topics. If the messages 
	  were separated by their message number, I could note down the 
	  numbers thast interested me, and then skip to that message. At the 
	  moment I can't tell whether I'm reading message 5 or 6 or 15, so I 
	  have to (speed-)read them all

So, with a few conceptually simple modifications, we might have a more 
(personally) useful list. But that's easy for me to say since I won't have to 
implement them.

tom gardner


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