[extropy-chat] META: ExI List Quality & Future

[Technotranscendence]

Again, I offer up the idea of limiting the number and size of posts per
member.  This limit, if fairly and strictly enforced, would, IMO,
increase list quality because any member will have to be selective about
her or his participation.  It imposes a "cost" on posting to the list,
yet does not target specific content and thus requires no moderator
intervention.  The cost would be weighed by each person against the
benefit of participating in a given discussion.  Each person would
experience the cost in a different way, making for a spontaneous,
extropic order.  Someone might not want to blow her three posts, for
instance, on one discussion, so she might be more concise and more
wisely use posts.

It would also prevent most flame wars.  If you have, say, only 5K of
post and can only post 3 times per day, then it's going to be hard to
flame someone in the usual sense.  The adversary would, likewise, have
to choose between devoting her or his daily limit to continuing the
flame war.  Sure, a slow motion flame war might smolder on, but I think
most flame wars come about because of the heat of debate.  Checking the
amount of material someone can throw at another person will reduce the
heat, IMHO.

Yes, conflicts are likely to still arise, but my guess is this would
limit their damage, provided the limit is low enough.  E.g., if the
limit is 50 posts per day with each post having a maximum size of 50K,
it's too high and would likely have no impact.  Of course, one wouldn't
want to make the limit so low that it stifles relevant, serious
discussions.  E.g., one wouldn't want a post limit of 1 per day with a
1K limit.  That would probably strangle communication of any sort -- 
other than posting URLs.  This might have to be fine tuned, but I
propose an initial limit of 5 posts per person per day with a post size
limit of 5K -- and nothing carries over.  In other words, use 'em or
lose.

Another variation on this might be to allow for trading in limits, but
that would require more overhead and I don't have any ideas on how to
implement it.

Regards,

Dan
    See my works at:
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/MyWorksBySubject.html