re: topic drift, A Proposed Effective Solution

[hodas@cs.hmc.edu (Joshua S. Hodas)]

At 10:53 AM 4/13/95, Martin Hughes wrote:
>On Thu, 13 Apr 1995 t.poza@genie.geis.com wrote:
>
>> Those of us who post love sumo. That's why we make an effort to
>> post results. We love it so much that we like to talk about the
>> issues that surround it in addition to the tournament results. It's
>> not a lot of fun for people like Tito, Robert, Steve and David to
>> tap out results. The reward is in the responses. No one is getting
>> paid for what they do and it takes a lot of time (believe me, as
>
>I also come down on this side of the arguament.  As others have
>mentioned, I feel this is a friendly group, with a really nice amount
>of 'chat'.  If it were me in a position to post results, I don't think
>I would be too happy about doing it if I felt that all the work and
>entertainment were purely a 1 way thing.


I too am in favor of this argument, but I also understand the feelings of
those who feel overwhelmed by the volume of mail during the basho, and
what they seen as pointless chat after.

The digest is a partial solution, but not really a complete one since those
looking for results will still have to scan through the long digest in
search of them.

It seems to me there is a better solution (though I would still stick with
doing the digest as well for other reasons). Just create another secondary
list called sumo-result. This should be mirrored to the regular sumo list
so you only have to subscribe to one or the other.

Then people can send "substantive" notes to sumo-result and chat to sumo.
The follow-up/Reply-to line in sumo-result should be set to the other list
so that chatter doesn't accidentally invade sumo-result.

It seems to me this would be easy to implement and would solve
everyones complaints.

Josh

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Josh Hodas                              Home Phone:   (909) 625-1179
Computer Science / Harvey Mudd College  Office Phone: (909) 621-8650
Claremont, CA 91711                     E-Mail:       hodas@cs.hmc.edu