Apparently Still On The List

[billroper]

It appears that I'm still subscribed to the GT list. I'm glad.

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

I'm glad too. Not that the list has been that much fun of late. I keep thinking about kill files. I'm hoping a week of people at Berzerker will break the political threads masquerading as tech.

Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

The problem with kill files is that they usually don't catch the responses. Then you get into ignore threads, etc.
I have been able to cancel some of my responses lately. I type them out then delete them unsent. Weird behavior, I guess, but not unheard of from what I read. Even when I hit Send, sometimes I don't know why I'm bothering. I guess it's just not wanting the (insert your noun here) to have the last word.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Even when I hit Send, sometimes I don't know why I'm bothering.

If the statistics held true, you were the most prolific poster on the list. You obviously do it from addiction.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I don't think that will be true when the next round of stats are calculated. I actually unsubbed from the list for about a month, then when I resubscribed, I posted about 1/20th as much as I used to. I'm posting a bit more now, but I'm trying to hold back.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

It almost sounds like I should peek into the last six months of postings to find out what you're talking about. :-)

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

9/11 conspiracy idiots.

[drsulak.livejournal.com]

I also did the unsent message thing - several times. I haven't had to do *that* for a while. Wow.

Yeah, Berzerker will save us. Another Wow.

[billroper]

I suspect you may be smarter than I am... :)

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

eh, I'm sure the vast majority of people on the list were thinking pretty much what you wrote anyway, it's just a matter of who finally minddumps out a post first. It happens.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

I haven't really read things for over a year now. Occasionally, I'll go in and mass read a month or so worth of stuff. When it starts to get pointless, I can thread delete the whole thing.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Yes, but that just all fits in with your post about not connecting much with old friends anymore.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Sort of.

A chunk of the list was about enjoying the virtual conversation with folks I might occasionally see at a Con. It was also about keeping in better contact with folk that I knew locally and enjoyed their company. Livejournal has filled a lot of that last requirement. I certainly know Bill "better" than I ever did from random run-ins with him at Cons or over the gt-pfrc list.

The unfortunate other half is the bad conversations that drove me away from the list. Just like a bad consuite, there were people that I just simply wanted to shutup. Killfiles didn't work well - people wouldn't change subjects, send new messages and all sorts of things that made the list unusable to filter. The broken-record political conversations were probably the biggest example: Yeah, the people involved may be cool techies, but I wouldn't want to be in the same room with them. It became easier to read the list on a delay basis.

Eventually it became easier to not read the list regularly. Several contributors that I liked had already left. The noise was far outweighing the signal and the load was higher than I wanted out of a casual daily read. I get far more enjoyment out of my LJ than I do out of gt-pfrc.

I miss some of the conversations, but I don't miss many of the personalities that had to be endured to actually read the list. Based on comments here, I just came to some of that conclusion early.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe some kind of moderated forwarding of the list....

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

My best idea from a few years ago (I may have even posted about it) is probably still the one I'd use:

- The posts you see are delayed by some time, perhaps a week.
- People can "vote" on individual messages. This is akin (and perhaps precedes) slashdot-type voting.
- Messages drop out based on threshhold. The same may be true of a thread or a person once it reaches that threshhold. In other words, a thread can be "tainted".

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I see with that:
Even with no delay, half the thread content is people who haven't read to the end of the thread yet repeating what's already been said. With even an 8 hour delay, there'd be 20 copies of the same statements in there (instead of the current 5 to 10)

I think the best way to do it would just be to have some designated moderators and have them pass/fail messages. The problem, of course, is that sometimes threads slide into the abyss slowly, and like a lobster in the pot, you can get to boiling point without realizing that it's gotten so bad, until you take a step back.

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

That's why I suggested a week's delay. One of the tagging criteria could be "duplicate info". The people who are subscribing to the delayed feed probably aren't as interested in responding same hour as many of the current folk on the list.

As for your lobster analogy, that's why you want anyone to be able to vote. :-)

[billroper]

Thanks.

You know, it's not so much that I'd like to teach the pig to sing. I'd just like him to stop grunting for a bit.

[dek9.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're still on, too. I'd hate to see the people whose posts I actually want to read leave the list. Then I'd have to leave, too.

[billroper]

Thanks. Obviously, I should post something interesting to the list to distract them from the kerfuffle.

Got any ideas?

[jebra.livejournal.com]

It'd be awfully hypocritical to unsubscribe someone for posting some of the things I've been thinking.

More to the point, that would go against the "room party" model. I expect people to disagree on all sorts of things, but hope they'll keep things civil. I don't expect civility all of the time -- we're not emotionless drones -- but I expect that to be the rule. As I recall, in the roughly 15 years the list has been in existence, only one person's been shown the door. Others have left on their own, deciding they were not wanted, but even that's a small number. (And sometimes they come back later.)

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

See above.

I'll agree with Kevin in that by being inactive on the list, I've put yet another nail in my ability to be socially active.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

But if it's a choice between seeing you on the list, or on LJ vs. at SEMGS, or Shadowclans, or Pennsic, well, I hope to see you at .

[backrubbear.livejournal.com]

Once the kitchen is done, we're also hoping to host <gathering>. :-)

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

And you got the < > correct, unlike me.

[billroper]

Well, of course. There are their crackpot theories and our crackpot theories. Personally, I try to keep my cracked pot full of grains of salt. There are a lot of subjects where I go "That's an interesting data point. Not yet sure if it's a reliable data point, but I'll file it away and check on it again later."

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Even as a johnny-come-lately to the list, it seems like the general tone has gotten less convivial lately even outside of the the particular thread that sparked the current discussion. There is an art to people who disagree on fundamental issues being able to hold a civil, interesting discussion, and that art seems to be being lost. This really stinks -- when the GT list is good, it is very good indeed, with a bunch of really smart people contributing.

I hope that you will continue to stick it out -- you're one of the people I often disgree with, but you almost always present opinions in a tone that lets me disagree intellectually rather than just becoming either angry or disgusted.

The conspiracy theory under discussion is a case study in why crackpot theories have trouble going anywhere. If the conspiracy really did exist, and there were a few tiny leaks letting some evidence out into the public domain, I can think of no better way for the masterminds to control the problem than to have a few people pushing the true story with a combination of weak logic, weak support for their claims, and an obnoxious attitude that gets nearly everyone pissed off with the discussion. I do not believe that the Bush administration engineered the WTC collapse. I do think there are a couple of things about the WTC that seem odd enough to me that I'd like to have someone I could trust as impartial actually work through the argument with me. But I couldn't ask such a question on the GT list now -- the flaming I would get would make the hypothetical thermite demolition cool and refreshing by comparison.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Given that my most recent activity on the list was to post a rude remark and retract it a few minutes later, I'm severely debating the wisdom of staying on.

Thank god for a mailreader that lets me delete entire threads at once.