One point that I have thought about, and talked about privately with
some of you, is (particularly on a list like this) how much time --
how many person-hours -- is spent on each email. An email list where
the entire staff and chapters officers are subscribed means that each
email is read by a few hundred people, many of whom are getting paid
and/or who have serious institutional responsibilities. So even if a
long mail only takes 5 minutes to read, parse and think about, how
many person-hours (and in turn donor dollars, lost productivity, or
time taken from other things) are being spent? Let's be optimistic and
assume that any given email is only read by *half* the list. 5 minutes
x 100 people = 500 minutes / 60 = 8.3 hours.
So one full workday -- 8 hours of our collective time -- for each long
email. That is a heavy burden to ask of ourselves, and a heavy
responsibility on those of us (like me!!!) who go on at length in
their mails!
Being the admin of this list, I have seen soooo many people unsubscribe to this list, mostly because they have found it nonconstructive and lots of lip-service going on. So people can be free to post whatever they want on this mailing list, but that doesn't mean that we are free from the repercussions of what we say. The consequence of this being a list that is ignored, or people unsubscribe, or even get added to a kill file.
So we can therefore continue on as we are, and reap whatever the results of that are or individuals can choose to self-moderate.