Re: the ASA email list

I think this is a lousy idea. Doug wants to restrict everyone for his
convenience in not having to hit <delete>. He has not considered that the
line he would read may very well be the one the sender thinks least
relevant, or at least less relevant. I think that, were this implemented,
a majority would look for a different venue.
Dave

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:39:09 -0500 "D and K Hayworth"
<dahayworth@insightbb.com> writes:

What do you think?

TG
I have a "love/hate" relationship with this list. I love it for allowing
me to stay connected with discussions of science/theology issues. I don't
post very often, and when I do, it is usually to ask a question. Then, I
look forward to reading the comments of those who have something helpful
to contribute because of their advanced study or experience with that
topic.

However, I hate having to weed through 30+ messages per day. The greater
the number of posts, the fewer that I open even to skim. When there are
lots of comments on a thread of interest to me, I only open those posted
by the two or three people that I've learned have something interesting
or helpful to contribute. No doubt, there are some useful contributions
by others, but I just don't have the time to open them all to check. And
even those "favorite" contributors who are capable of composing useful
posts often fail to do so because they get caught up in making quick
replies to more trivial posts.

In other words, the substantive posts on this list are really important
me, but it's hard to find those anymore amongst all the drivel.

Here's my proposal for a solution: ALLOW ONLY ONE POST PER PERSON PER
DAY. This will require participants to choose the one previous post that
is most important to reply to instead of contributing to banter. It will
ensure that participants refrain from perpetuating those less relevant
threads. Participants will be forced to save up several thoughts about a
thread and synthesize them into more meaningful posts. Also, it will
allow room for contributions from participants like myself who can only
check the postings once a day; we will finally have a chance to
contribute to a thread before the "chat-room" types exhaust the subject
or already diverted it to a different direction.

In my opinion, making this one change can correct about 75% of the
current list problems.

Doug
Received on Tue Jun 13 01:00:32 2006