[clug] An alternate place for longer, meandering threads?

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

My experience with lists is that I have no problem picking the threads
that I want to be involved in and am not worried about the threads I
ignore.

* I vote for leaving things the way they are.

If a list degrades to the point where the reason I joined is not satisfied
then I can chose to drop off, but this does not happen due to just a few
long, unpopular (to me) threads. For example, if clug turns into a regular
"why I hate microsoft" or "why commercial software is a crime against humanity"
then I will probably get off.

And I do understand how some people are very sensitive and just one bad
thread leaves them with a bad taste for a long time. An off-topic list
will not protect them as threads will probably start in the main list
before migrating off-topic.

Eyal

steve jenkin wrote:
> We may have lost Ben, James and Conrad from the list...
> But their departure raises an issue.
> 
> Other lists I've been on have had to deal with handling threads that
> vitally engage only a small section of the community. They tend to
> become long and sometimes heated with only a very few posters.
> 
> To some list members, these contentious issues are significant and
> interesting. But the lack of response/engagement by 'the silent
> majority' seems to say it's of peripheral interest, at best, to most
> listers.
> 
> One persons' can't-live-without thread is anothers' "noise".
> 
> Those other communities handled these noisy threads in two ways:
> 
>  - either setup beforehand a set of lists for diff purposes
>    and wrote clear posting guidelines (with moderators enforcing).
> 
>  - or created an 'off-list' list in the course of time.
>    People would get encouraged to take discussions 'off-list'.
>    Democracy in action :-)
> 
> One answer is saying:
>  "we're all responsible adults, either use a killfile or learn to manage
> threads". [more brutally, "life's tough, deal with it"]
> 
> I don't like that approach.
> 
> The "prevention is better than cure" rule says its better to have a high
> Signal-to-Noise ratio on the primary list than to make everyone waste
> time managing 'noise' in their own way.
> Which for some people is to unsubscribe... And the community loses.
> [Why would you do that publicly? Sorry, I don't understand that.]
> 
> So, where do others stand on this?
> 
> Could we have a CLUG-other list dedicated to continuing long (&
> especially) heated discussions???
> 
> All those for?
> All those against?
> Better suggestions??
> 
> I think the (whatever the list owners/moderators say) have it :-)
> 
> cheers

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky	(eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)