Thanks, Alan for the analysis. It brings some much-needed clarity to the issue.
I suspect the recent concern over off-topic posts rests with the political, divisive nature of the most recent major OT thread. I apologize for the extent to which my own posts may have extended that thread on-list. I've since taken all discussion of that thread off-list, and I expect to do so more quickly with OT posts in the future.
I agree with Alan that this is an excellent list, and we generally do a good job of keeping the discussion on-topic (or very nearly so).
==Joseph++
Alan Dayley wrote:
> Brief Analysis
>
> Time frame: Roughly one week from "RE: IPCop v1.4.5 Configuration"
> 5/3/2005 3:59AM to "Re: Politics was Re: OT: Let's hear it for the
> activist judges!" 5/9/2005 8:43 PM (The last message before I started this
> thread.
>
> Classification basis: Just counting the subject field to classify message
> as "on" or "off" topic.
>
> Total emails: 190, 100%
> On: 123, 65%
> Off (FS, hardware only or computer related, etc.): 34, 18%
> Off: 33, 17%
>
> (Percentages rounded. Disagreement over "on" or "off" status may exsist,
> especially for the "Off but computer related" catagory. This is just a
> quick judgment call on my part based on stated subject.)
>
> OK. That was one week before the first "stop OT posts" requests came in.
> OT posts were significant ( > 15% ) for some time prior to that. I think
> that shows that the list is highly tolerant of OT posts since it took a
> while before any moderating comments were posted. This is good.
>
> I am not advocating a strict policy. I don't think moderation will happen
> (time and spam) so a strict policy would not be enforced anyway. I like
> brief OT conversations and occasionally start them myself.
>
> I am advocating a reasonable maintainance of the purpose of the
> plug-discuss list. That is "a mailing list that you can join to ask or
> answer questions, and talk about linux stuff." Being that it is a Linux
> User Group, the topic is Linux and things related to it.
>
> This email list is one of The BEST on the internet. I have looked and
> found very few to compare with the insights, knowledge, responsiveness and
> tolerance that members of this list create. We can be proud of that.
> Let's just keep it up!
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>
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