Von Fugal wrote:
This doesn't have to preclude the original discussion about $BEHAVIOUR running its course.
I agree that it doesn't *have* to preclude the original discussion, but in many (most?) cases, it does. Consider the political thread that we had going here for the last couple weeks. It went from gas prices to spending habits to real estate and finally to politics. Once the thread transitioned to each new topic, the prior topics were largely abandoned (not totally, but mostly).
It seems that once a new topic gains momentum, people generally don't rekindle old topics unless they feel *really* inclined. And then, for the original topic to survive, it seems that a new email thread is necessary.
On that note, I thought it'd be really cool to create a program that plots a directed graph of email comments with edges connecting responses to those comments, and those comments of course having edges that connect them to their respective responses, and so on. It'd make for a cool social science study and a really nifty visualization. Lots of tough parsing though. :)
--Dave /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
