Re: Limiting number of post from a poster per day per list
On Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 02:08:11AM +0100, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> Here is a quotation from debian-private which prompted me to post here
> initially. Ted's proposal is much restrictive.
>
> On Fri, Dec 24, 2004 at 10:18:38AM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 24, 2004 at 09:00:33AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > Well, the amount of freetime one has can certainly be a limiting
> > > factor, since debian-legal is a major time-looser as soon as you
> > > disagree with what the vocal minority things there.
> >
> > For anything which is non-technical. there are enough people that use
> > the "last post wins" school of argument, where repeated assertions are
> > mistaken for cogent arguments, that some number of people (including
> > myself) have decided basically given up on participating in such
> > discussions. Life is just too short, and I have more important things
> > to do.
> >
> > My belief is that if Debian as a whole is willing to countenannce this
> > style of corporate decision-making (since the only two mechanisms seem
> > to be the rather heavy-weight GR process and the gladiatorial combat
> > by rhetoricians), then Debian, like the U.S., will get the kind of
> > governance it deserves. (And get it good and hard.)
> >
> > If on the other hand Debian is willing to think about alternate ways
> > of trying to promote more useful discussions, something that would be
> > useful would be a posting filter that only allows a limited number of
> > contributions from a particular poster per day. One could imagine
> > more sophisticated schemes where the number of posts per day would be
> > enhanced for each RC bug that the poster closed, but the bottom line
> > is by making posting a restricted resource, (a) we would keep the
> > traffic of certain lists down to a dull roar so that people with a
> > life could follow them, and (b) it would force people to edit their
> > contributions down to something thoughtful, since a "yes it is", "no
> > it isn't" style of discourse would use up all of their posts very
> > quickly.
> >
> > - Ted
>
> We are here to provide FREE softwares to the users. This is the result
> we are after. That is what we do well and important. We want to
> encourage thoughtful FREE speech and create productive environment to
> reach this result most effectively.
I think one of the major underlying reasons why ML:s, and Usenet too for
that matter, can be such timewasters is that there is no mechanism to make
posters "think hard enough" before posting. Let me explain what I mean: It's
certainly a good thing that email allows one to contact another person (or a
small number of people) relatively effortlessly. But when something written
by a single person is read by thousands, maximizing the "common good"
suggests that the writer should spend some extra effort to make his message
as clear and concise as possible.
Your proposal would be one way of trying to make posters think harder before
posting, albeit IMHO the metric chosen is not a particularly good one as
explained by Glenn Maynard and Martin Schulze. A moderation system as Colin
Watson suggested sound like a better proposal (IMHO of course).
At the extreme end one could always try to ape the peer-review system from
academia. I.e. start a "Debian Journal" and have an editor and a number of
reviewers to make sure that only well written, well thought out articles
that bring something new to the discussion are accepted, thus weeding out
the flamage and reiteration of old arguments that fills the typical ML.
Happy New Year,
--
Janne
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