The future of the list?

[doktor at primenet.com]

The P-list has been so dismal that I stopped reading it about two weeks
ago.  I transferred all the messages into a temporary file, telling myself
I'd read them soon.  I read a bunch of posts yesterday, and deleted a bunch
more unread.  I considered unsubbing, since the perecentage of flames and
irrelevant posts has now passed some personal threshhold of tolerance.

And yet...

...I have greatly enjoyed _some_ of the off-topic posts, and I myself, when
but a beardless and callow youth (about four months ago) threw some flames
listward.  Like Vaska, I have been on moderated lists where everything is
relevant and little is interesting. I have been sternly taken to task by a
series of cloyingly pleasant but firm "list guides" who declared threads
that I began on that list "closed" and deleted all responses to them.
Moderating the list would indeed cut down on the number of "irrelevant"
posts, but as Paul DiFilippo points out in his wonderfully pithy post, only
at the expense of destroying the list I so enjoy.

I second Brian McCary's idea of boosting the signal when the noise gets too
loud.  Intelligent discourse is a fragile thing.  Let's preserve it.

--Jimmy
  http://www.angelfire.com/oh/Insouciance/