[extropy-chat] Appropriate List Content - was Malachy's Prophecies; Pope John Paul II, then two before the destruction of the Holy Roman Church

[Samantha Atkins]

On Apr 5, 2005, at 11:45 AM, Hal Finney wrote:

> I don't agree that telling people to ignore posts they don't like is
> a good way of dealing with the question of what is on or off topic.
> A list is like a garden; you can't just ignore the weeds, or soon you
> will find that they have taken over.  There is also an online version
> of Say's Law ("bad money drives out good"): bad postings drive out 
> good.

Topics are nourished by attention.  Sufficiently deprived of attention 
they wither and die.  In practice though we all have a lot of buttons 
that can be depended on to give some nourishment to even the most 
unloved topics.  But we could check our reactiveness a bit.

>
>
> I don't think the corrective mechanism should be a matter of banning
> people, unless they consistently show that they can't contribute 
> material
> acceptable to the list.  A simple objection, followed by comment and
> discussion, like what we are having now, is the appropriate mechanism.

What is "acceptable".  Who is empowered to object?  It had better be 
made pretty crisp.  Nothing is more tedious and off putting than 
endless discussions of whether X post or Y poster is up to some 
nebulous list standard.

> - s