Re: Voting on messages: a way to resolve the mailing list problems
Nick Phillips <nwp@nz.lemon-computing.com> wrote:
> On 22/12/2008, at 9:42 PM, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Show me the numbers. I believe that the current "silent majority" is
> > by definition silent and most of it will continue to be silent,
> > watching lists just in case something useful appears and refusing to
> > participate in improving the lists, as they have so far. Meanwhile,
> > the vocal minorities will continue to be vocal and so more
> > enthusiastic (ab?)users of any Whuffie system which is implemented.
>
> Refusing to participate in improving the lists? Those of us who try to
> remain
> silent until we have something useful or important to say *are*
> improving the lists.
Indeed, but those who post when they have something useful or
important to say aren't part of the "silent majority" (or the "vocal
minority" either), so I wasn't suggesting they are refusing to
participate. I think that emphasising such posters would be a good
part of any solution - and it's missing from the current proposal,
as far as I've seen so far. I mean, it could happen with that system,
by chance, but there seems no reason that it would. In fact, the
tendency of active list followers to divide quickly makes me think
it's extrememly improbable.
> Some mechanism to indicate to posters that their posting was not
> appreciated would be
> useful and appreciated, so I'm sitting here watching those with more
> time to spend on
> it come up with ideas to improve them further.
There are already crude mechanisms (reply privately, reply publicly,
report abuse and so on) but they are social more than technical.
While a more technical tool may help, a near-totally technical one
probably can't fix social problems.
Hope that helps,
--
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
(Notice http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html) tel:+44-844-4437-237
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