Different technology

[glovvgirl]

I want to stress up front that I am not putting forth an opinion as 
to whether I think HPfGU should move away from Yahoo! Groups to a 
different sort of system.  
X-Original-Yahoo-Groups-Redacted-From: "glovvgirl" <glovvgirl at ...>
X-Original-Yahoo-Groups-Redacted-X-Sender: glovvgirl at ...
X-Original-Yahoo-Groups-Redacted-Return-Path: <glovvgirl at ...>

However, should the administration decide to consider other options, 
I hope they will consider using the Slashdot software.  This is a 
bulletin-board style system that can support *hundreds* of thousands 
of members while maintaining high-quality posts and a remarkable 
degree of customization for the individual reader. 

The chief benefit of this style of software, in my opinion, is that 
it solves the volume problem by allowing members in good standing to 
give anonymous ratings of postings.  Each posting then has a score 
and a descriptive title (e.g. "4 - informative" or "5 - funny" or "1 -
 off topic").  Rather than trying to regulate what people post--which 
is what HPfGU is doing now at great cost in time and bickering--
readers can regulate what they read by setting a threshold.  If you 
set your threshold high, you will tend to read the highest quality 
posts.  If you set your threshold low, you will read more of the 
posts, but you'll see more low-quality posts.

You can choose to see discussions displayed "flat" (ie, not 
threaded), "threaded" (original post with links to followup posts), 
or "nested" (original post with sections of followup posts nested 
beneath them).

The system also does smart things in terms of moderation, division of 
labor among the administration staff etc.  Also, it's free!

The biggest cons of using this approach are that the group would have 
to fund the hosting of the web site and the software somewhere, and 
someone would have to know how to set it up and maintain it.  It 
can't be that hard, though ... look at the huge variety of 
sites/organizations that use it! http://slashcode.com/sites.pl

(On the subject of funds, I hope that the list administration will 
not hesitate to throw money at the problem *if* the decision is made 
that it will help.  Consider, if only 10% of the list gives only $1 
per year, that's more than $1,100 right there!)

Here's some information for those of you who would like to know 
more.  If you're curious at all about a system that very clever folks 
developed organically over time to handle huge volume in a system 
like this, it may be a good read for you, even if you think HPfGU 
should stay right where it is.  

Here's the generic FAQ about Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/faq/

The portion of the FAQ that is most likely to be of interest to this 
group is the portion on Comments and Moderation (notice that Slashdot 
uses the word "Comment" the way HPfGU uses the word "Post"): 
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml

Take note of the Slashdot concept of "karma," which helps ensure high 
quality moderation even though it's distributed across the membership.

-jenea