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

[Brian Atkins]

Jeff Medina wrote:
> While I am in favor of Eugen's suggestion, echoed by Damien and
> others, at least in principle, I'm having trouble seeing why this is
> so important in practice. The few people who have evidenced themselves
> to be reliable sources of white noise have ended up with all messages
> from their e-mail addresses filtered into the trash on my machine.
> Problem solved.
> Is the concern that new members of the list will drop off because of
> the vocal minority? This is the only cause for any concern that comes
> to mind.
> 

Jeff, the problem is at least threefold:

1. Some impatient but very interesting people just up and leave rather 
than even bother setting up filters or continually manually deleting. 
They are fully capable of setting up filters, but don't bother. Many 
people I enjoyed seeing post here several years ago are long gone.

2. Some relatively patient people don't have the knowledge or desire to 
setup filters. I think in some cases they have zero filters at all, so 
all their email from all sources is dumped into their inbox. I don't 
know why they like it that way, but the fact is that they do apparently, 
and it becomes overloading quite quickly and can even overcome their 
patience if they have to continually delete off-topic messages.

3. Off-topic posters have a tendency to drag "good" posters into long 
drawn out threads. Your simple filter will not quash all those 
responses. Or you may end up filtering people who later may something 
interesting.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/