At 19:01 01-10-2002 -0400, John Giorgis wrote:
It might even get you killfiled...... and then what is your point of
view worth?
Killfiling someone will not stop that person from sharing his points of
view. The only one who loses here is the person who does the
killfiling, because s/he will not see anything written by the killfiled person, and
thus will also miss any intelligent remarks or questions from that
person.
<<<<
You are making an error here. Each person has to make a cost-benefit analysis in choosing to read a message. For example, we have all decided that reading Brin-L carries more benefit to us than the cost of not doing something else that we could with our time. If we did not, we would not be here.
Now, it is entirely possible to decide that another poster is so unlikely to post an intelligent remark or question that the probability of this approaches zero. Additionally, it is entirely possible to decide that reading certain four-letter words carries such *disutility* for you, that the cost of this outweighs the benefits of that posters intelligent remarks and questions. In either case, you benefit from killfiling the other poster in question.
Moreover, by taking the time to write a post, unless writing this has the value to you that is the equivalent of a diary entry, because you find some value in sharing this post with other people. Thus, the value to you of writing that post is decreased by every list-member that chooses to killfile you and not read your posts. For example, you probably would spend little time writing posts to a list in which every person has killfiled you. Thus, each killfile has a small marginal decrease in your own value of writing posts.
QED The statement "the only one who loses here is the person who does the killfiling" is proven false.
>>>>
Jeroen "His problem, not mine" van Baardwijk<<<<
Pretty brave words from someone who recently took to the practice of sending certain of his messages to four of my e-mail addresses, in the hopes that I would read one of them.
Of course, he never considered the possibility that I still occasionally read his posts, but have simply decided that the marginal value to me of responding to him has pretty much approached zero.
JDG
