On 9/7/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
Peter Blaise responds: Ahh, and therein lies the rub. Who decides what's off topic? As suggested earlier, even a moderator's feeling of déjà vu would be
We decide as a group what the topic is. And moderators exercise their judgment as to whether something is on topic or not. Other readers help, by gently nudging discussions back on track, or making sure at least part of a message is on topic. It's quite common.
enough to ... to do what about it? Therein lies another rub - what
to do about it,
once a moderator decides a post is actionable? Quash the topic on the list? Delete it? Ban the writer?
Yep. All of those. But before that, gentle comments - from anyone - usually work.
What is it again that we are trying to protect by asking another person (a moderator) to preempt or take other action on a post that's not spam?
We're trying to prevent a lot of wasted time, and allow serious discussions to take place.
In the meantime, might I suggest that we all rise to the challenge of adjusting our own signal-to-noise ratio controller - using our own delete keys, and our own scroll-down arrows!
I spend more time scrolling through this list than actually reading serious posts. Multiply that by the number of readers and that's a huge waste of time. Not to mention good posts do get lost in the din.
As a computer consultant with 30+ years successful experience supporting customers, may I assist anyone in finding the scroll-down arrow key on our own
Yeah. Don't attempt to change the world, hide from it! Well, that's certainly one approach. Many problems can be "solved" by ignoring them. Or we can fix them.
Steve