somewhere near the temporal coordinates of 9/9/01 4:00 PM, the entity known
as Thomas Cherry transmitted the following from jceaser_at_mac.com:
>
> No mater how hard people may complain, I do not thing off topic threads
> will ever stop. Some topics here I will admit should be stopped, but
> convincing others to do this is sometimes impossible. Humans tend to
> like to argue about things for which they feel strongly about. Many
> topics disused here have been of no interest to me, and others I have
> followed with upmost anticipation. Now I am going to assume that
> threads will never stop, if one specific thread stops, it will only be
> replaced by another. I think this is a realistic assumption. Given
> this assumption to our universe, I can not argue that threads should
> stop, because they can't I can however propose methods for managing
> them. I propose that all off topic threads have something like
> "[offtopic]" in the subject to help others filter them out. This
> requirement should be made mandatory on these topics. Now, this dose
> not solve the problem of those who use there newton for e-mail, but, it
> is the best I can think of, short of writing an IMAP client (I don't
> have time for that). I will concede that something needs to be done
> about threads, but I don't thing anyone can stop them by simply asking.
>
> Another method which works quite well in many groups is to ignore the
> offending topics. Some people (including me) have been known to fight
> harder when they see opposition. The best way to stop some of these
> threads may be to simply ignore the letters. I know the these topics
> make many people made because of the waist of space and bandwidth, but
> if you replay, you are becoming a part of the problem, not the solution.
>
> Well, I hope these two suggestions help, I employ this group to do
> something about off topic threads if it really wants them to stop, or
> this group will be doomed to suffer from them.
>
If we were talking about model railroading or something, THAT would be
off-topic. Since abandonware and how to deal with it is a MAJOR issue to
the entire community, I, for one, consider it highly ON topic. However,
progress (such as it is) in online communities often is a matter of fits and
starts -- furious discussion for a bit, then things sit for a while, then
more furious discussion -- I'll grant that it's time to take a break from
this topic.
BTW, I've tried ignoring all those MP2k-only topics, but they keep coming
up, so I don't think that suggestion works... :-)
- Eric (MP130 owner)
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Oct 03 2001 - 12:01:41 EDT