Subject: (urth) crackdown 2.0

From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at moonmilk.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:43:50 +0000

The urth list is getting way too busy these days, so I'm gonna lay
down the law again.  Please send any comments or complaints directly
to me <ranjit at moonmilk.com> rather than to the list.

1. Please stick to the core mission of the list, which is discussion
that *directly* relates to Gene Wolfe's fiction (with occasional
diversions for notable events in the sci-fi and literary worlds).
Religion in general and atheism in general are not suitable topics.

2. I'm setting an informal goal of no more than approximately five
messages per person per day.   It's ok to go over five now and then,
but don't feel like you need to use all five every day, either.  I'm
not going to bother counting individual's messages, but I'm hoping
that we'll get slower-paced and more focused discussions.  If this
doesn't slow the list down enough, I'll make it a technical
restriction, which will be much more annoying for everyone.  We'll see
how it goes.

- Ranjit

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:06:20 +0000

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at moonmilk.com> wrote:
> down the law again. ?Please send any comments or complaints directly
> messages per person per day. — It's ok to go over five now and then,
> but don't feel like you need to use all five every day, either. ?I'm
> that we'll get slower-paced and more focused discussions. ?If this
> restriction, which will be much more annoying for everyone. ?We'll see
> how it goes.
>
> - Ranjit

I approve of these restrictions.

I would also like to add a third suggestion: *please stop changing subjects*!

I try not to complain but merely 'mute' or 'killfile' threads I find
dull or stupid (like a great many in the past few weeks), but I cannot
do this if people keep changing the subjects - the emails with
modified subjects will land right in my inbox, and like a rat on an
intermittent reinforcement schedule, I will read it to see whether
something interesting has been said.

-- 
gwern

---

From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at moonmilk.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:37:10 +0000

> something interesting has been said.

This is also officially encouraged behavior.  Think of it as a
bureaucratic filing system - even if the topic of discussion drifts,
keeping the subject the same helps keep the thread of thought
together.

Also, if you have a lot of related messages to reply to, I encourage
you to combine all your replies into one message, digest-style.

- ranjit

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:56:50 +0000

On 6/7/2010 9:37 PM, Ranjit Bhatnagar wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Gwern Branwen<gwern0 at gmail.com>  wrote:

I do not feel it right for you to expect everyone else to modify their 
behavior to suit your reading preferences.

> keeping the subject the same helps keep the thread of thought

Wait a minute - just two weeks ago you said "It's a good idea to edit 
the subject line of a discussion to reflect the topic being discussed" - 
which is it?

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:21:20 +0000

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:56 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Gwern Branwen<gwern0 at gmail.com> ?wrote:
>>>

I see. Will you be extending your little anarchist free speech crusade
to the *entirety* of netiquette? Or just the parts that people bring
up?

I ask for subject changes to match genuine topic changes precisely so
other people do not have to change what they write, to allow me to opt
out. If they don't, then I'm forced to either unsubscribe entirely, or
do my best to destroy each offending thread. I don't want to do
either.

>> This is also officially encouraged behavior. “Think of it as a
> Wait a minute - just two weeks ago you said "It's a good idea to edit the
> subject line of a discussion to reflect the topic being discussed" - which
> is it”

There's nothing inconsistent here, except in your head.

I asked you offlist to look at the list of threads for just June and
tell me whether you thought each and every one was a genuine subject
edit in response to a topic change. You didn't. So I'll provide an
example from http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2010-June/thread.html

What topic change, pray tell, is signaled by switching from
'travelling north' to 'Urth Digest, Vol 70, Issue 15'?

-- 
gwern

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:34:08 +0000

> 'travelling north' to 'Urth Digest, Vol 70, Issue 15'?

In fairness, for those who receive the list as a digest, that is the
form of the subject header they get. They would have to change the
subject header in order to keep it the same, so to speak.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:16:51 +0000

Ranjit owns the list.

The owner makes the rules.

This is not a democracy.

.

>>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Gwern Branwen<gwern0 at gmail.com>
>>> ??wrote:
>>>>
>>> This is also officially encouraged behavior. ??Think of it as a
>> the
>> is it?
> example from
> http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2010-June/thread.html
>
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:11:51 +0000

On 6/8/2010 10:21 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 12:56 AM, Jeff Wilson<jwilson at io.com>  wrote:

Yes, the pro-moderation anarchist, that's me.

> example from http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2010-June/thread.html

I didn't see any offlist messages from you, sorry.

> 'travelling north' to 'Urth Digest, Vol 70, Issue 15'?

That's a consequence of the list owner allowing digest mode to the 
people who habitually overlook the part of each digest that says 
something substantially similar to "When replying, please edit your 
Subject line so it is more specific than 'Re: Contents of GurpsNet-L 
digest...'" The list software is more than capable of being used to hold 
those people accountable for their oversights without penalizing 
everyone else.

I mean, digest mode has it uses, but aside from the subject mangling it 
also fubars the message threading that would make life much easier for 
you by letting you blacklist a conversation and never see replies in it 
ever again, regardless of what their subject lines say. *That* is not 
just a crime against notional nettiquette but violates internet 
technology standards as well as creating technical problems for people 
with strong presentation preferences like yourself.

---

From: Jonathan Laidlow <jon.laidlow at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:20:51 +0000

While we're being kind to digest readers, it would help if some of you could
delete the irrelevant portions of the messages you're replying to. Sometimes
the digests have one message, which contains 6-7 previous messages, and they
become very difficult to read...

/ducks/

Jonathan
www.ultan.org.uk
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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:36:21 +0000

On 6/9/2010 6:20 AM, Jonathan Laidlow wrote:
> While we're being kind to digest readers, it would help if some of you
> could delete the irrelevant portions of the messages you're replying to.
> Sometimes the digests have one message, which contains 6-7 previous
> messages, and they become very difficult to read...

I agree that quote trimming is a very worthy practice, even if digest 
readers are often the worst offenders.

---

From: Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:56:43 +0000

> I didn't see any offlist messages from you, sorry.

My mistake, that was James Wynn - same initials, I guess!

-- 
gwern

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From: John Watkins <john.watkins04 at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:05:12 +0000

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 9:56 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> **
>  _

We seem to be pretty common.

>  ______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
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