[extropy-chat] Inadvertant insult

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> Another list had the same problem about a year ago, as a
> matter of
> fact 
> with one of the same people. The list administrator generated a
> completely 
> automated system that kept the clutter out of mailboxes. It
> lets
> people 
> rate postings on a connected web site. Those who got some magic
> number of 
> low ratings on their postings were snipped out of the mailings
> (though they 
> were webbed).

...sounds quite like a suggestion I made, a few hours before you
posted this.  ;)

BTW, the snipped poster should be automatically told that their
posting was snipped.  Otherwise, the poster may think the post
is being ignored by the other members when it is merely unread,
or one might generate false belief that the list is not
functioning.

> The problem (now that I consider it as an engineering problem)
> is
> lack of 
> feedback.  If list readers could be induced to click a link
> that a
> post was 
> below minimum or well above average,

Agreed.  Thus the second part of my suggestion: monthly or
quarterly reminder emails to the list members, reminding them of
this feature.  People might be motivated to give feedback by a
surge of bad or good (but more likely on the bad) posts - but if
they've no idea of how to give that feedback, without posting to
the list (and thus generating even more noise, from a certain
point of view), the motivation is squandered.