From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2002-01-27T21:33:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Separate lists

Hi --

On Sun, 27 Jan 2002, Massimiliano Mirra wrote:

> The discussion seems to have died, I think more because the proposed
> solutions (however good) involved drastic changes rather than because
> the issue itself died.
>
> So let me point out something that involves no change at all in the
> setup and still allows people to select the traffic.  (BTW this had
> already been half-proposed, so nothing really new, just highlighting.)
>
> By agreeing on a set of tags like [XML], [GUI], [CODE] and the already
> in use [ANN], we keep all the traffic on one group/list, and allow
> people not interested in e.g. GUI discussions to use the `kill'
> feature of their newsreader on messages with [GUI] in the subject,
> while to follow just specific discussions, messages with no tag in the
> subject can be killed.
>
> This is probably the simples setup and does not affect matz's or
> Dave's time.  What do you think?

I don't think it would work, for a couple of reasons.  First, agreeing
on the tags....  Come to think of it, this is also the stumbling block
for me with splitting the list up.  I think/hope that a lot of posts
are multidimensional.  I guess one could just select a dominant theme,
and have that be one's tag.  (And no one would be forced *not* to read
anything.)  But I just have a feeling that in practice it would be
problematic.

Also, a system like that is sort of moot unless everyone does it, and
not everyone will.

And, possibly a more fundamental question for me... I'm not sure what
this would add to the existence of subject lines.  If someone's going
to put "[GUI] Ruby question", they might as well put "Ruby GUI
question" :-)

By the way, if you haven't seen it before, you might be interested in
Bertrand Mayer's "SELF-DISCIPLINE" scheme.  I could only find a Usenet
article on it; the Web links he gives don't work any more (but I
haven't hunted thoroughly on the Web).

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=self-discipline+group:comp.lang.eiffel&hl=en&selm=3v2d3l%24qeb%40eiffel.com&rnum=2

(Is there a more concise way to specify Google group URLs?)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav