On Mar 19, 2004, at 1:36 PM, john harvey wrote:
- but any reduction in noise
that might potentially lose us valuable contributors is worth it,
what might be noise to you may be important for someone else - who are
you
to say what noise is?
Some things are a grey area, but sure, you have a common sense valve in
your brain as do most people. Noise is a post asking "does anyone
know any good jokes"? I mean come on. Noise is something if you have
to think "should i really send this?" it means you probably shouldn't.
I mean people use common sense... it doesn't require this much
analysis. The social part of 313 can be a nice side-effect sometimes
of good content. But take away the good content and you've got a lot
of annoying 1-liners. If you're sending back a 1-liner to someone,
ask yourself "should i just send this to the sender, or 800 other
people too?" Make your own call, just use common sense. Is your
response adding value to others for the reasons they list exists? Or
just you and the sender? How do you know for sure? There is no hard
way to judge, no scoring, just use common sense. REGULATE yourself.
I think Greg's point was extremely well articulated. Nobody can hold
313 'hostage' with off-topic drivel... please all monitor yourselves.
There has obviously been lots of talk lately about reducing noise, so
think JEEZ, can people please accept that many here think the list can
be made even better by less little personal chats CC'd do 313 ?
There is no such thing as 313 being "too quiet"... i'd rather have no
content on a day than inside jokes. (or whatever, i'm not trying to
be anti-humor here) ;) I am on some great other lists that are
less than 20-30 posts per day, but dang-it they're signal-to-noise
ratio is great. There are always people on topic-related mailing lists
who sit bored at a terminal all day and use this as their outlet of
entertainment and social interaction... understand 313 was not created
to be that outlet for you. First and foremost it is a discussion of
music and detroit, and then the other stuff can exists but can we
please keep it around the edges? (And this is coming from someone who
had 313'ers from europe come to his wedding! We just took our
friendships off the list.. and while they are not even on 313 anymore,
we are still friends and in fact visit when we travel every few years).
I think on the whole 313 has been doing fairly well, and as this is
self-moderated, can the 1-liner crowd and social chat forum please just
be aware of this and work towards less just chit-chat? It's been
plainly stated, I mean the chatters... there are bulletin boards too
out there. It's also possible to post both socially and
content-wise in the same email.. fine, sure, I do it too. But a simply
purely social message, 313 is honeslty not the place. People sub here
for a PRIMARY reason, and it's the reason the list was formed... not
the by-product. If you find yourself posting 20 times in a day, and
they're all more or less about music, congrats. But if they're not...
you may want to begin to ask yourself as you using common sense before
you hit the 'enter' key.
Just 'hit the delete' key comback only goes so far. A discussion group
founded upon a topic is only as valuable as those who contribute
meaningful content TO it.
respectfully,
--
Matt MacQueen
http://SonicSunset.com
