James, thanks for your thoughtful points about noise. I guess I am one of
those you were referring to!
To reduce the noise level, in future I won't respond to posters who are not
making sense. I hate to let nonsense go unchallenged, but I suppose that, in
a public internet forum, you just have to accept it.
And I definitely won't make another post today!
Best wishes
Richard Wein (Tich)
See my web pages for various games at http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~tich/
-----Original Message-----
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@mtcnet.net>
To: evolution@calvin.edu <evolution@calvin.edu>
Date: 24 March 2000 02:59
Subject: Noise and this list
>Susan,
>
>You suggested in a recent post that:
>
>>
>>>And while you are up, could you reach out your divine hand and fix the
>>>"reply to" function so that posts go to the list and not the individual?
>>
>>I've gone around with Terry about this. He is of the opinion that
>>the present setup is the lesser evil, and I was unable to convince
>>him otherwise.
>>
>
>
>As a listowner and as someone who is interested in the topic of this
>list (but often frustrated by the noise and loss of focus and deep
>thinking in line with the original purpose of this list), I agree
>entirely with Terry. This list has sometimes degenerated into a noise
>talk origins and it could be and has been much more.
>
>As some of you know I even did a study of the noise on this list and you
>can see the results in the following two urls from the archive.
>
>http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199909/0439.html
>and
>http://www.calvin.edu/archive/evolution/199909/0466.html
>
>There I was concerned about a couple of noisy individuals dominating the
>forum. One thing that helps give us less noise is for the reply to be
>set to the individual so that we encourage people to pause and at least
>type in asa address if they address the list. Yes I know it is a bit
>less convenient but you get less noise this way. Now if the list were
>low volume and generally thoughtful and on topic I would lean the other
>way. On the two lists that I am list owner (Christian Biologists and
>Christian Geologists) one list is set to reply to the poster and the
>other to the list.
>
>One last thing, be aware that if you use group reply so you get the
>e-mail address of the list - you should always remove the e-mail of the
>person you are replying to or they will get two identical e-mails. One
>will come from the list and one will come directly from you.
>
>--
>James and Florence Mahaffy 712 722-0381 (Home)
>227 S. Main St. 712 722-6279 (Office)
>Sioux Center, IA 51250
>
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