[Foundation-l] moderate this list

[Thomas Dalton]

There are too many emails in this thread since I last read it for me
to reply to them separately, so will just post a general monologue and
hopefully address most of the points made. Please excuse the length of
this email.

I consider this a discussion list, first and foremost. It is used for
making announcements, for drawing attention to things going on
elsewhere and various other purposes, but above all else it is here
for discussion. Discussion is an exchange of ideas. While I do not
find all of the ideas expressed useful or interesting, I strongly
believe that any idea expressed with a genuine intention of furthering
the goals of the Wikimedia movement should be allowed to be spoken
(not necessarily here, there are better venues for some ideas, of
course) and if that prompts someone else to have an idea they wish to
express in response, they should be able to do so. To restrict people
to one post a day would completely stop that exchange of ideas, all
you would get is a sequence of monologues. People can start blogs if
they wish to post monologues (I have recently been considering doing
just that). I much prefer lists like this one to contain short
messages in reply to other short messages with a quick back and
forward of ideas building upon the ideas of others.

It has been said that I post a lot. In terms of total number of emails
that is certainly accurate, however if someone were to count the bytes
posted (excluding quotes of previous messages) I suspect my
contribution would be little different to that of many other active
subscribers to this list. I don't generally write long messages (this
one is an exception to that), I write short replies to the messages of
others. I think this list fulfils its purpose far better through such
messages. As long as people use modern email clients there is no real
disadvantage to splitting things into lots of messages (if you are not
using such an email client then that is your problem, not me - if it
is your choice, then make a better one, if it is forced upon you then
complain to the person doing that forcing, don't complain to me).

It has been suggested that posting a lot diminishes the value of each
post. I'm afraid those saying that simply don't have a good
understanding of economics. There are two ways something can get value
- from utility and from scarcity. I would hope my emails are valuable
because they are useful. In this context, scarcity is pretty much
irrelevant.

Finally, I know from private conversations that there are people that
read my emails and find them useful. I write for them. If you are not
in that group, you are welcome to ignore me. You are even welcome to
complain about me to anyone that will listen, but I reserve the right
not to be in that group.

Thank you for reaching the end of this email. I hope it has helped you
understand my views on this subject.