On 19-08-2021 16:23, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 01:34:24AM -0400, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside > wrote: >>What if ? What if there wasn't any *bad* user ? You are the one bringing >>over old subject that you consider off-topic. You seem really touched by >>giving your self a role as governor of a mailing list or policing what's >>acceptable and not. But don't seem to understand that the community >>itself made the choice of having this list un-moderated. > > I can't speak for Brian but I've been subscribed to this list for a long > time and I've seen a change in how it is being used, which I think is > harmful to its core purpose, and so I (and others) are trying to find a > way to fix that. With respect, you've only been active here for a very > short while, so you don't have the perspective that others do on the > problem. > > People posting off-topic and going off on tangents has always happened.
Correct! > What has changed is the frequency and duration of those tangents, which > are now drowning out everything else. Do you really think it's that bad? I can remember back when I would wake up in the morning to have over 300 list messages on screen. And, many of those were Off-Topic but, usually, people were reasonably active in labelling them as such. On the other hand, the majority, as it is now, would be on topic. Some _technically_ productive content would be there, and often, once that purpose had been served, many of those would become off-topic, also. But, as I have recently stated, interaction, within a community, is important, whether the content is on or off-topic. Within reason. When carried to the extreme, it's not productive. And, further, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We've had an off-topic mailing list in the past. I actually signed up for it and spent a little time there. It was a ghost town. It simply didn't work. Cheers! Harry. -- `Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth'. -- Albert Einstein
