On Mon, 12 Feb 2001, Paul Hoffman / IMC wrote:
> At 8:58 AM -0800 2/12/01, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> >It's the "turkey factor" -- the "turkeys" on a list are a teeny-tiny
> >minority of these things, but as admin, they drive you crazy, to the point
> >where it's easy to forget that you have 1,000 people on the list and four of
> >them you want to kill. That's the ENTIRE issue with noise on a list (or
> >usenet) and scaling up: if you have a list of 1,000 and four idiots, you can
> >deal with it, and so can your users. If you have 5,000 and 20 idiots, those
> >20 idiots will likely make everyone crazy and cause them to leave unless you
> >can get them under control... But the percentages are the same...
>
> And it's even harder to remember that most of these folks (but not
> all) are neither turkeys nor idiots. They are people with
> personalities and excitement levels that are well out of the norm.
> Many of the most frustrating (for me) folks on my mailing lists are
> incredibly competent at what they do; unfortunately, some of what
> they want to do is to get people to may more attention to them....
I believe that if you take away those 20 users, another 20 of the
remaining 4,980 are likely to move forward. This is also an aspect of the
issue with noise on a list.
