A belated reply to Murray's post below (excerpted). (01)
I acknowledge that I will miss things of value by deleting without reading.
By the way, I didn't mean to cast any aspersions on particular threads; I
just chose some recent examples. (02)
The problem I (and all of us, really) have is overload. I can't read
everything, and personally seldom read longer email posts to groups unless
they happen to squarely target an interest of mine. I (also personally) find
it difficult to absorb topics that move in the direction of abstractions via
email. At the risk of sounding pejorative, I find them easy to write but
hard to read. (03)
So when I see repeated topics, especially ones with names that *appear* to
be abstract, I tend to tune out in the interest of saving
time/attention/energy for posts that are more targeted and easier for me to
absorb. (04)
I'm not trying to claim any virtue for this position. I just provided it as
a data point to the discussion of how to organize the discourse on the list.
Maybe I have an un-thought-out position on this, actually, about what types
of discourse work best in email lists, but I certainly haven't thought about
it enough to make any kind of general statement. (05)
Best, (06)
Al (07)
>From: Murray Altheim <m.altheim@open.ac.uk>
>Reply-To: yak@collab.blueoxen.net
>To: yak@collab.blueoxen.net
>Subject: [yak@collab] Re: What are we trying to accomplish?
>Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:47:41 +0000 (08)
>Al,
>
>I understand your point, and I do think the risk is high.
>
>I'd disagree with Eugene about chatter, at least insofar (09)
- snip - (010)
>I'm just wary of having any specific conversation characterized
>as "chatter". It's a dangerous precedent, both for the writers (011)
- snip - (012)
>(and conversants). If we had a technology that allowed us to
>track multiple subjects as they arose within multiple threads,
>e.g., where it was possible to see that within "fundamentalism"
>we were also talking about technology development, community
>usage, whatever, that would be a boon.
>
>Murray
> (013)
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