[R-390] RANT: The Delete Key and Unwanted Threads
Bob Camp
ham at cq.nu
Tue Jul 6 20:45:29 EDT 2004
Hi,
I will admit to being a bit new here. I've only been on the list for
around five years now. Since I have been at the list game since the
early 1980's, before I signed up for the list I did take the time to go
and read the archives of the list. I'll freely admit that was easier
back then than it is now. You used to be able to go back quite a few
more years than you can now. A couple of things became fairly clear in
reading what had been going on here before I joined:
1) Many of the people posting on the list knew a *lot* about R-390's
2) On occasion the list moved off into some pretty silly threads.
3) People who participated in the technical threads also seemed to
dominate the silly threads as well.
4) Rarely did those who were active posters object to the occasional
departures into humor, they expected it.
Based on that it was pretty hard to tell what kind of list this
actually was. Was it a humor list that masquerades as a technical
discussion or just the opposite. Certainly both aspects of the list
have a long history here. To say that humor threads have no place here
is to deny a long tradition here on this list. It has *never* been an
either / or situation on this list. Both technical discussion *and*
humor have been here from the very start.
I'd make another set of observations about the list today:
1) Some of the faces are familiar from the archives and thank you all
for hanging in here
2) A *large* number of the people who once were here to provide their
extensive knowledge about the radio to the rest of us are no longer
here on the list
3) I can't remember *any* of them departing because of to much humor on
the list
4) I can remember several departing based on messages a lot like the
one below
So it boils down to - just how useful is a dead list that no longer has
anybody on it who really knows the radio? That has to be weighed
against the bandwidth used ....
If the reappearance of one of the founding fathers of the list kicks
off a bit of fun, so be it. From my perspective the list is a lot more
interesting when informed people hang around here. I never even notice
it when a one post in the last six months lurker drops off the list
unless he loudly announces it.
If the trade off was three more humor threads and three departed
lurkers in exchange for a few of the good old boys showing back up then
I know which I would pick. Anybody who really wants to keep an R-390
running would make the same choice in a heartbeat.
Face it - a lot of the questions from new users about the radio come up
again and again and again. The answers in these cases are pretty
predictable. Without some humor thrown into the mix this list could get
pretty deadly pretty fast.
We could of course go another route and refer every single question
that is asked to the archives rather than answering it. We could all
pile on new members who asked obvious questions and make them feel like
fools simply for asking. Points would go to the one who got in the
first hit. It's pretty much standard procedure on a *number* of other
lists. They say "on topic" but at a significant cost in terms of
friendly behavior.
Another observation was made a while back by Nolan. He did a search for
the people who were the main objectors to this kind of thing. His
observation was that they had never participated on the list in any
significant manner. Often their objection was also their first post.
Based on a quick scan against the names on both the public and private
comments some things never change.
I am not making a case that anything goes. In fact far from it. If you
take a look at the actual posts in our most recent exercise you will
find real technical data buried in a number of the posts. I do not
believe that any thread that runs for a day or two has gone so far
beyond it's natural life that it needs to be killed. Some of these
threads have gone on for months in the past.
If you believe that this is simply a purely technical list and that any
post that does not have ohms law in it is off topic then you are
mistaken. If you object to a list that is not tightly focused on pure
technology then you object to this list. If you subscribed to this list
under the impression that it was a pure technical list then you
subscribed in error. If you subscribed in error then the solution is
obvious.
Enjoy!
Bob Camp
KB8TQ
On Jul 6, 2004, at 5:10 PM, Clay Curtiss W7CE wrote:
> I delayed deleting myself from the list hoping things would settle
> down.
>
> I enjoy a LITTLE humor and OT conversation as much as the next guy,
> but I
> received EXACTLY ONE HUNDRED (yes, that is 100) R-390 list emails from
> 12:40PM yesterday to 12:40PM today and most of them were OT. With the
> subject line changing every few hours, its not always simple figuring
> out
> what is junk and what is interesting. Maybe most of you are retired
> and
> have nothing better to do with you life than sort through the email
> that
> makes your life somehow more interesting. Personally, I'd hoped that a
> moderated group would save me some of that headache. Even at 5
> seconds per
> email, deleting this list accounts for over 8 minutes of my life in
> the last
> 24 hours that I can't get back (that annualizes to over 50 hours per
> year of
> delete time).
>
> The library analogy was really quite poorly thought out. When I go to
> the
> library, I don't wander aimlessly up and down every ailse looking at
> every
> book for the topic I'm interested in, and then cursing those that don't
> apply. I learned the Dewey Decimal system and card catalogs in
> elementary
> school and find they save me a lot of time (kind of an early spam
> filter).
> Using the same principles, I subscribed to an R-390 mailing list
> rather than
> a complete collection of OT mailing lists hoping that most of the
> material
> would somehow apply to the R-390 and related topics.
>
> Now that I've increased the the bandwidth requirements of this group
> way too
> much, I'll go back into reading mode and wait for something
> interesting to
> show up. Although I suspect that I have helped to make some of your
> lives
> just a little fuller and certainly more interesting because you
> received one
> more email.
>
> Sigh, now I assume the ranting and flaming will begin. Oh moderator,
> moderator, wherefore art thou moderator?
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tom Norris" <r390a at bellsouth.net>
> To: <R-390 at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 12:52 PM
> Subject: [R-390] RANT: The Delete Key and Unwanted Threads
>
>
>> I apologize in advance for being disrespectful to several of
>> those on the list. This is a very sincere apology, and I hope
>> it will be taken in the manner it is meant.
>>
>> I subscribe to over a dozen mailing lists. When I see a subject
>> line that I know I don't want to read, I simply hit the delete key
>> and don't read it. No one is holding a gun to my head and forcing
>> me to read any message message on any list. Even if the list
>> comes to me in digest form, I just skip over things I have
>> no interest in reading. There are those on nearly every
>> list that instead of simply deleting the message before reading
>> will yell loud and long about how bad that message is. Some will
>> say "By Jove, look what this group has turned into, I'm
>> un-subscribing post-haste!" even on groups that have not seen
>> posts in months. (I'm not talking about this group!) If I got
>> upset over message threads I didn't want to read, I wouldn't
>> be subscribed to any lists now. I simply use the delete key.
>>
>> It's akin to going to a library. Lets say you hate books about
>> sewing. Do you simply *not check out the book*, or do you
>> go to the library board and demand they remove all
>> books with any reference to sewing from all branches
>> else you will never let your shadow cross the threshold
>> of any library ever again? Me, I'd simply not check out
>> the book. *shrug*
>>
>> I know this silliness about ballast tubes and kielbasa
>> and wet sheep has been going on for about a day now.
>> (just a day, maybe two now) There will most likely me
>> more posts come along that don't mention wet sheep
>> as tube substutes. In fact today there was at least
>> on post about the use of the URM-25 and yesterday
>> several about SP-600's.
>>
>> If any of you have defective keyboards with a non-functioning
>> Delete key, I have quite a few spare keyboards around
>> and will be glad to send you one gratis. I've got several
>> types of PC keyboards, Mac keyboards, maybe one
>> or two for DEC or Sun machines so I may very well
>> have one that will work for you.
>>
>> Delete Key, just say yes.
>>
>> Tom
>> _______________________________________________
>> R-390 mailing list
>> R-390 at mailman.qth.net
>> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/r-390
>
> _______________________________________________
> R-390 mailing list
> R-390 at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/r-390
>
More information about the R-390
mailing list