P-List traffic

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carvill John [mailto:johncarvill at hotmail.com]
> 
> Toby - no offence, but this seems really strange. Not a fan of high traffic 
> lists? Eh? 
A neutral comment: the numbers are very suggestive of the old 80-20 rule. 
In support of prolific vs sparse posting: like a sculptor or a barber, it's easy to cut what's not needed, but can't fill in what isn't there. 
Also, average word count per post is pretty low. For anybody willing and able to take on a 1,000 page P-novel, the few pages in a day's list traffic (even these days), most of which doesn't require deciphering, don't seem to me too burdensome to wade through for some genuinely worthwhile info/opinions/links/etc. 
I blush to admit that P-list is, yes, a part of my social life; and (perhaps worse) a fairly major part of my intellectual life. It would be easy to name a bunch of off-topic posts that I have enjoyed and would be poorer for missing, not to mention on-topic insights like the recent "'faithfulness of dog' motif" one from Tore Rye Anderson. Or the grand unified theory of Pynchon that several have been working on (and Dave seems to have recently alluded to some such notions of his that AtD might confirm)
not to disagree too much with what I see as your (Toby's) purport though: it's easy for things to get out of hand, like some lists on Usenet that got ridiculous. Let's all keep it real. 
> 
> Not that I have had time to read very many posts lately, my wife gave birth 
> to a boy on Wednesday morning so I am entering a whole new world of 
> busyness................
> 
congratulations! 

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