From: Lars Poulsen <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Avoiding undesired TREG messages by categorizing
At 07:27 AM 6/23/97 -0400, David Drori wrote:
>What I propose is to divide TREG into several sections: telecom analog,
>telecom digital, telecom acoustics, EMC, Safety, descriptions of
>information sources, test equipment, job postings, regulatory humor, ...
The 'net culture - like other cultures - has its patterns. Because
the 'net is growing, these patters are continually being discovered
by new users who need to figure them out for themselves.
One such pattern is the life cycle of a mailing list. The list starts
as informal chit-chat among a few friends, and after it reaches about
50, it is put on a list server software. It then grows quietly, until
it reaches about 500 members. By then, a crisis occurs. Typically, at
this age/size, the following are all true:
- the list is growing by 10-15% per month
- the original core group are still active, and are still providing
a lot of information to the benefit of all
- some of the core group are beginning to get tired of "newbies".
"I've explained this stuff four times in the last 12 months",
they tink, "Are those new people complete boneheads ? Don't they
get it ?"
- the vast majority of list subscribers have never seen the original
close friendship; they see a large informal newsy chat group,
and feel they have as much right to chatter as do the old-timers.
When the group gets near 1000 members, it is about to collapse in
off-topic stuff and spam. The daily volume is about to crowd out
the mail boxes. The "list owner" who runs the list server software
is tired of the housekeeping and may in fact abandon the list.
I have participated in many of these lists, and the pattern is fixed.
Besides TREG, I am on a list of VW bus owners, a list of Danish
expatriates, and several mailing lists from the IETF (Internet
Engineering Task Force). These have all gone through the same pattern.
The complaints are the same, and the proposed remedies are the same.
1) Splitting into multiple lists
If all you do is to divide into several lists, it won't work.
Most of us need to be on most of those lists, and nobody will
be able to keep track of which of the lists the message from
Vic came in on.
Maintaining 10 lists is 10 times the work for the listserv maintainer.
2) Moving to USENET
The general answer is that if you think a mailing list with 1000
members is full of junk, you have not seen usenet lately.
There ARE some remedies that do help:
3) Pay the list owner for his duties.
Many lists take up an annual collection drive, asking each subscriber
to send $20 to the list maintainer. In practice, this tends to raise
about $200 - $4000 per year. Enough to pay for a dedicated PC server
with list server software. Not enough to pay for the hours it eats.
Still, it makes the host feel appreciated.
This may even turn into a "real subscription", as in "no pay, no play",
but I tend to drop out when this happens.
4) Semi-moderation: List members are tagged as "free run" or "to be
screened". People who consistently add value get autmatically passed
through, others get routed through a moderator who may edit or suppress
wordy, repetitioous, misformatted or off-topic messages.
When done competently, this can dramatically raise the S/N ratio;
dropping the volume in half witout losing anything of value.
5) Spawning new lists: While dividing the existing list into many lists
to create sub-groups, there are some ways to divide the flow that do
work.
a) Announcements separate from chit-chat: A completely moderated
announcement list may be worthwhile if it is obvious what belongs
there. The group of expatriates, that I mentioned, has a special
distribution list for thely news bulletins, to which only the
news reporter can post. And yes, we have a husband-and-wife team
who spend two hours a day to produce this. (We collect $1500 for
them twice a year.)
b) Separate constituencies with very little overlap:
The VW bus list divided into two separate lists: One for air-cooled
and one for watercooled busses. The equivalent might be to split
TREG into IEC950, EMI and TELCO areas, but I think we have more
overlap than you'd think: In most companies, it's the same compliance
engineer that pushes paper for all three.
6) Better discipline and better tools.
It would help a lot, if people would consistently reduce the amount
of quoted matter in a reply message to the minimum needed to establish
context. And if they cut down on those end-of-message signature files.
Hex dumps of animated pictures have no place there.
And better tools on the receiving end are helpful too: Many e-mail
readers can now automatically route the mailing list stuff into a
separate folder as it is received. I try to gateway the mailing lists
into my news server, so I can read them with my news reader which
is much smarter than the mail reader about following threads.
In the long run, I suspect that TREG will mutate into a WWW-site of
information archives, with a subscriber-funded email list for the
interactive stuff. RCIC is a good step on the way.
/ Lars Poulsen [email protected] +1-805-562-3158
OSICOM Technologies (Internet Business Unit) Fax: 805-968-8256
7402 Hollister Avenue Manager of Remote Access Engineering
Goleta, CA 93117 Internets designed while you wait
