P3D Re: Mailing lists

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 07:49:10 -0700
>From: Peter Davis <pd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Re: Mailing lists

>I don't know what Linda's answer would be, but for myself, I prefer the BIG
>LIST because then everybody was seeing all the messages.  

That's just it. The driving force of this recent push toward merging the lists
is not primarily for the convenience of the people wanting to merge them -
it's so they can force everybody to read their posts, whether they're 
interested in that topic or not. There *are* people who subscribe to some of
the lists but not others, because they are only interested in particular
topics, or because they don't want to receive the full volume of traffic.
Forcing the lists to merge would be doing a disservice to those people.

For those who are inconsiderate enough to want to force everybody to receive
their posts, I would say they can practice their inconsiderateness now by
posting to all of the lists regardless of topic. That will provide those
of us who subscribe to multiple lists the added benefit of receiving your
message several times, just in case we missed the first one. :-)

Now of course there will be some people who would *like* to force everybody
to receive their posts, but are afraid it would look tacky for them to post
a digital 3D message, for example, to the RBT list. But if the lists are
forced to merge, then they can enjoy the convenience of being inconsiderate
*without* looking tacky, because the merger forces everyone to be equally
inconsiderate. (I don't have much sympathy for this crowd - if people want
to indulge in being inconsiderate, I think it should be made clear that that's
what they're doing.)

>There was more interaction and more
>discussion when everything was in one list.  

I think Dan Shelley made a good point - people tend to "see the past through
rose colored glasses". Before the creation of SD3D, there was a lot more
digital traffic, but almost all of it was either "get this digital stuff
off P3D", or "us poor digital 3D guys are being persecuted". After the
creation of SD3D, the volume of traffic on digital 3D has dropped, but the
signal-to-noise ratio of the remaining digital discussion has vastly improved.

John R


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