Pedro Sanchez wrote:
Alternatively, we've learn not to go into long long nitpicking threads. So this is better, less volume, but signal/noise increases.
I'm even reading some threads now instead of automatically canning them.
Beware of the emailpostcountitis!
I agree with this, especially as it relates to recent activity. My sense is that recent discussions on this list have been very useful (including this thread), quite a bit more than they were roughly a year ago. Anyway, using my rough impressions as a guide, I find basically no correlation between the volume of messages and the quality.
This is not to say that activity levels aren't something to be concerned about, although I might want to start with a focus on something other than this mailing list. But sometimes lots of visible activity reflects (or promotes) lots of productive work; sometimes lots of activity simply means we're bogged down in things that are keeping us from productivity; sometimes visible activity is lower because we're busy being productive in other ways; and sometimes activity is lower because we're not as involved in the projects. Using a two-directional measurement to describe phenomena with at least four possible compass points will only be a very small start, from an analytical perspective.
--Michael Snow