[extropy-chat] Politics

Samantha Atkins sjatkins at mac.com
Tue Dec 27 21:34:03 UTC 2005


I don't personally believe that any of these things are needed.  The  
list is coming to a consensus slowly and organically about what types  
of political discussions have value.  I think that is a better  
overall and much more realistic solution.

That said I think prefixes are very useful for sorting messages.  I  
do not favor multiple lists at all.  I have seen topics purged to  
other lists only to have some topics and discussions silenced.  It  
was not at all helpful to the community.

- samantha

On Dec 27, 2005, at 8:18 AM, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

>
> On Dec 27, 2005, at 9:43 AM, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
>> First let me state that politics is not banned on this list.
>
> Thanks.  This is important.  As I read back through the archives to  
> see what I missed, I see that some people have misunderstood me to  
> be calling for censorship.  I want to make it clear that I do not  
> condone censorship.  Nor, do I think anybody on this list has done  
> so.  I think everyone wants to maximize the utility of this list.   
> Unfortunately, we differ on which topics are interesting.  There  
> must be a win-win scenario that allows everyone to discuss extropy- 
> related topics without destroying anybody else's discussions.
>
> That is the problem.  Surely we can come up with a solution.
>
> Some have proposed just hitting the delete key on posts we don't  
> like.  This takes a lot of time and effort to sort through many  
> messages to delete them to find the ones we want.  Depending on  
> one's interests, the work of reading and deleting unwanted posts  
> could quickly override the value of the interesting posts.  Some  
> people also have limited time to devote to this list.  Any time  
> detracted from the interesting articles diminishes the value of the  
> list for them.
>
> Some have proposed using prefixes on postings.  These prefixes  
> would categorize posts with "POLITICS:", "HUMOR:", "TECH:", etc.   
> This sorts the subjects and makes it easy for people to skip the  
> categories they don't want.  Unfortunately, many people either  
> forget or refuse to do this.  Thus, the system breaks down because  
> it is not enforced or used.  So even if this system "would" work,  
> it hasn't been put in place, so it "isn't" working.
>
> Some have proposed filtering messages on the receiving end.  This  
> is simply not possible for many clients in many situations.  In  
> those cases where filtering is possible, it is not easy to develop  
> filters that consistently block the unwanted material while never  
> blocking the desired material.  Different people have different  
> threshholds for losing valuable messages.  I, for one, cannot  
> accept any level of false filtering.  If a filter blocks a  
> legitimate message, it is unacceptable to me.  Most of the spam  
> filters and content filters I have reviewed have a high error  
> rate.  I process over a thousand messages per day.  An error rate  
> of even 1/10th of one percent causes me to lose real mail every  
> day.  This is not acceptable to me or my business needs.  If anyone  
> has discovered filtering technology or definitions that actually  
> identify topic based on content without making mistakes, I would  
> love to hear about it.
>
> My favorite method for categorizing posts is to have the divided by  
> topic.  A group could have multiple lists with each list devoted to  
> a specific topic.  Continued discussion and replies automatically  
> go to the same list. People could subscribe to only those topics  
> they desire.  I do not understand what is wrong with this method.   
> However, others have objected that they feel demeaned if their  
> message is not "on-topic" for the most popular or main list.  They  
> don't want their favorite topic relegated to a 'side" list.  There  
> is also a fear that we don't have enough people or topics to  
> subdivide the list, as if the list would dwindle away to nothing if  
> we only talked about our favorite topics, and we needed to include  
> uninteresting topics to prop up the volume.  There also seems to be  
> an element of proselytizing to the audience in political or  
> religious arguments.  The promoters seem to want to deliberately  
> spread their message far and wide, even to people who don't want to  
> see it.  Such people will resist any method to categorize their  
> posts so that people can avoid them.  They insist that their posts  
> are "on-topic" and the most important topic of discussion.  They  
> sometimes even insist this to the point of disrupting other threads  
> or conversations to convert them to their more important topic.
>
> Does anybody have any other proposed solutions or objections to  
> proposed solutions to add to this list?
>
> --
> Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
> CISSP CISA CISM CIFI NSA-IAM GSEC ISSAP ISSMP ISSPCS IBMCP
>
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