Re: Busy busy busy - another metadiscussion

[P3D john bercovitz <bercov@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, it sounds like I have a personal problem if I can't keep up 
with 60k of messages each day!  8-)  Of course I have to read them 
all, word for word, or I would be abdicating my moderator job.  If I 
didn't have to read them all, I'd have an easy time of it - I know 
who I enjoy reading and I bet you do too because you know which kind 
of nut _I_ am.  It would be easy to send a few authors off to a file 
and the rest to oblivion, to be cold-hearted about it.  
Unfortunately, I'd miss a lot of good stuff.  Unfortunately right 
now, it's way too much traffic for me.  Anyone want to be the list 
heavy?  8-)

Regardless, I would point out that among those stating reasons for 
leaving the list, far and away the single most frequent reason is too 
much traffic.  (Usually followed by a seemingly-interminable number 
of bangs (!s).)  If this holds true in the unexplained departures, 
and I have every reason to believe it does, then we are losing one 
heck of a lot of subscribers to this single cause.  The turnover on 
this list is a few tenths of a percent per day.  (Only the 
certifiable stay?  8-)  So what would be the value of those lost from 
the list?  What would be the value if the truly knowledgeable members 
of this list continued to read the list instead of sending it off to 
dev/null?  What if Hutch _always_ read the list?  What if Bob Mannle 
_ever_ read it anymore?  (No, they've never complained about excess 
traffic.)  What if Bob Bloomberg hadn't left?  Talk about someone who 
knows how to create stereo with a computer!  The guy's simply 
phenomenal!

So my thought was that those who like computer stereo and photo 
stereo could subscribe to both lists and since digests come out when 
they reach ~25k, there would be no change in the number of digests 
received per day - they would just be a little more organized by 
topic.  I'm not wed to this or any other scheme to split up P3D.  
Just trying to think of how to make it appealing to a larger number 
of 3D folks.  The wider the appeal, the better the service to the 3D 
community.  Could just as well split it along intro/advanced lines 
with benevolent types subscribing to both lists.  Not so sure if it 
would be as obvious to subscribers just which list to post to...  Any 
proposed split would have to be along "natural" and obvious lines to 
avoid endless misposting.

A hidden agenda here is that if we can figure how to split the list 
traffic into roughly equal natural parts, someone else can be 
moderator on half of it.  But that's not the driving reason - the 
driving reason is as stated above.

John B


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