I would argue that this is a matter of personal responsibility. If you
have a problem with what others say, take responsibility for what you
read -- ignore the posts. No one is making you read every one.
I would also point out -- being that I've been filtered, too -- is that
your post was not culled because of low scientific quality, but because
of excessive personal attack. That's certainly why David Inouye has
figuratively spanked me over the years, and most of the time I deserved it.
Frankly, I find most of the discussion here, when I have time to follow,
quite interesting. I don't blame anyone else for my inability to keep
up. It really is my problem, not yours.
In my rather considerable online experience (longer than some of our
younger members have been alive), I have noticed that every time
complainers about post volume got their way and limited the scope and
volume of the discussion, the list has died, or might as well be dead
with only one or two decent posts every year or two. I don't see that
anyone's interest is served by such a short-sighted and unreasonable
solution as you suggest.
There was a reason many enlightenment thinkers believed in the freedom
of expression. It wasn't that every idea expressed is quality, but that
over time, those ideas backed by the best evidence and argument would
eventually (though not necessarily immediately) triumph. I don't think
anyone here, no matter how long one's CV, is even remotely qualified to
pick the eventual winners.
If you don't like the arguments you see here, offer better ones. That's
the best way to "improve" the list.
Dave
On 6/4/2013 12:36 AM, Lee Dyer wrote:
So in response to what seemed like a reasonable suggestion (from another list
poster) that ECOLOG posters limit the number of posts per individual (sort of
like asking excessively vocal faculty members to allow a faculty meeting to
proceed by limiting their outbursts) and that we try to keep post quality high
(sort of like peer review), the Ecolog moderator advises that we just filter
posters who are taking over Ecolog or who are obvious trolls?
Such a response is analogous to this line of reasoning:
Ecologist: "We need to decrease the number of papers per issue, increase the quality
of papers, and increase the rigor of peer review in the journal Ecology." (There is
too much noise and too many errors on Ecolog, we should ask members to limit the number
of posts per person and push for greater quality.)
ESA: "if you don't like papers in Ecology, then don't read them." (Just filter
out the noise.)
I have had an Ecolog subscription since it started, when I was a grad student,
and it was really useful and interesting. However, in my personal, subjective,
anecdotal opinion, the average quality of posts has severely declined. I used
to recommend it to students, but now I do not, because the very faint signal of
good ecological information is often lost in the noise of excessive (and
sometimes unintelligible) prose from a small fraction of posters. Sure, there
are options for dealing with this putative problem, such as filtering, or using
the digest, but these are sub-optimal and are somewhat like trying to treat a
sickness rather than trying to prevent it. I cannot recommend this forum to
students or colleagues because I can see little value now other than job
postings. The occasional opportunity for one to offer an opinion on theory or
methods (or to get insight from relevant theoretical or methodological posts)
often will be met with a cacophony of disorganized, top-of-the-head ideas and
opinions (uh... kind of like this post right here?). Conversely, and equally
frustrating, substantive theoretical questions may often be met with complete
silence. It does beg the question of why I still have my subscription...
The irony here (actually, there are several ironies in this post) is that I
HAVE filtered certain posters, thus I have missed most of the discussion here...
Cheers, Lee
p.s. I once had a post denied because I said that a climate-change denier poster was
"hoist by his own petard" (from Shakespeare). So there is SOME quality control
on Ecolog.
*******************************************************
Lee Dyer
Biology Dept. 0314
UNR 1664 N Virginia St
Reno, NV 89557
OR
585 Robin St
Reno, NV 89509
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.caterpillars.org
phone: 504-220-9391 (cell)
775-784-1360 (office)
Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 23:05:51 -0600
From: [email protected]
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] filtering messages
To: [email protected]
I suspect that all e-mail programs have the capability to filter
messages. You can typically filter by subject, by sender, etc. So
it's not difficult to set up your account to filter out messages from
particular ECOLOG-L subscribers, or threads you don't want to
follow. For example, here's information about how to do that with Outlook.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-HA010355682.aspx
For Eudora, go to Tools > Filters (probably the same for Thunderbird).
For Gmail, see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en.
Another option is to get the daily digest so all you get is one
message a day from the list. To set your subscription to the digest
form, send (from your subscribed address) the message
set ecolog-l digest
to
[email protected]
And you can also scan listserv messages on the weekly archive, which
has a table of contents for each
week:
<https://listserv.umd.edu/archives/ecolog-l.html>https://listserv.umd.edu/archives/ecolog-l.html
David Inouye, list owner and moderator.
Dr. David W. Inouye, Professor
Associate Chair, Director of Graduate Studies
Dept. of Biology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-4415
Rocky Mtn. Biological Laboratory
PO Box 519
Crested Butte, CO 81224
[email protected]
301-405-6946
2013-14 President-elect, Ecological Society of America
--
------------------------------------------------------
David M. Lawrence | Home: (804) 559-9786
6467 Hanna Drive | Cell: (804) 305-5234
Mechanicsville, VA 23111 | Email: [email protected]
USA | http: http://fuzzo.com
------------------------------------------------------
"All drains lead to the ocean." -- Gill, Finding Nemo
"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
"No trespassing
4/17 of a haiku" -- Richard Brautigan
