I have belonged for years to a list called PICLIST which is for programming of PIC microcontrollers and other electrical engineering topics.
They've been using tags in the subject. [PIC] for PIC programming and related, [EE] for subjects that talk about hardware, [AD] for ads, and [OT] for other (or off) topics. When subscribing to the list you can pick which subjects you want and the others are filtered out. Other topic discussions vary from anything science related to nuclear energy. Seriously, there are really few questions that these guys cannot answer. If something gets out of hand, personal, or into taboo topics the moderator shuts down that thread. So I agree with Rick, in that there is such a wealth of experience here that it is a shame not to open up the discussions to other things (within reason). However, I do not in any way think that this should be done without giving people who don't want OT stuff an easy way to simply filter those discussions out. Lindy -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Fochtman Sent: 18. tammikuuta 2008 20:53 To: IBM-MAIN@BAMA.UA.EDU Subject: OT Threads and other comments I don't mind one or two posts that might be off-topic, but I DEPLORE long OT threads. With 600-700 E-Mails per day coming in, I don't need the additional "noise". I get 300-350 from various desirable mailing lists, maybe 50 from friends and the rest is spam. For the same reason, I don't like getting the "H & D" (Hatred & Discontent) messages that appear here all too often. We're all professionals here, of widely varying skill levels and experiences; let's act like professionals. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
