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

[kevinfreels.com]

> Your misunderstanding of my words is so severe as to border on
> an insult, but I choose to believe that was not how you meant
> it.  That said, here are two major errors in your analogy:
>
> * This is a private forum, and this matter is about something
>   where the rules for government are dramatically different from
>   the rules for private forums.
>
> * Even ignoring that, in the analogy, this would be like a judge
>   saying that MLK can't given his speech on civil rights in a
>   court case about a parking ticket where everyone involved -
>   offender, police officer, et cetera - was white, and therfore
>   civil rights and race relations did not enter into it.  This
>   would not prevent MLK from preaching to the public at large,
>   just prevent him from disrupting a court case with something
>   totally irrelevant.  (Which the real MLK knew better than to
>   do anyway: he knew that such an approach would just make
>   those involved in the case less willing to listen to his
>   words, without gaining his movement anything.)


I'm sorry if you were insulted but my original reply was in response to
suggestions that postings be reviewed for "qualilty content" before being
posted to the list. As for the analogy, I apologize. I was always under the
impression that this was an open forum with rules - much like any public
spot where people gather. In this case, it would be a cafe where people
gather together to discuss an extremely broad topic. I agree it wouldn;t do
for people to walk into a poerty club and start spouting basketball scores
or talking about the war in Iraq, but my impression of the direction of
things was one where would-be poets were turned away before they even got in
the door because their poetry was deemed lousy by the doorman. It makes
perfect sense however that if a person repeatedly showed up with poetry that
turned out to be nothing but screaming and no one in the place liked it,
they would be asked to first quit, then leave, then finally asked not to
return because they don't fit in.

If this is where you were going I am truly sorry. I see your point about
people being either unwilling or unable to enforce those rules. I guess I am
missing something rather obvious; Namely, how an organization with an eye
for the future still has to have a manually controlled mailing list when all
the necessary tools for this are already available at almost no cost. I'm
all for a true message board with a "rate this response" button and a star
rating by each member that could be sorted by member rating as well as by
topics. This should be easy enough to do with the resources that are
available for message forums right now. If this is what was intended I
sincerely apologize.