What Price Success? Improving Posting Quality on HPfGU

[kjirstem]

I'm very glad to see this discussion. I appreciate the thought
that Carolyn and Kneasy put into their suggestions and the vast amount
of work carried out by the list elves.   I am more of a lurker than a
poster but I have a few thoughts that I hope will be seen as a
contribution here.

First, I agree with much of what was said by Carolyn and Kneasy.   I
was also thrilled to hear of a catalogue of posts in the works. 
Personally, I don't like to post unless I have read most of the
recent posts and think I have something different to add to a current
thread. These conditions are rarely met, largely due to list volume
and Yahoo!Mort.

Admin:
>>With regard to your recommendation to limit the number of posts per
person per day, as a first step in our efforts to manage list volume,
we have decided to ask the list membership to voluntarily limit their
posting rate to three posts per day.<<

kjirstem:
I would really like to see this voluntary quota on posts per day per
poster come into effect.  I think this would be good for the following
reasons:

1) Potentially lower list volume
2) Potentially higher post quality since posters might spend more time
on each post
3) Potentially greater diversity of opinion by leaving openings for
different posters


C/K:
All posts should be subjected to a delay of up to 24-hours before
they appear on site.

kjirstem:
I do not like the idea of a 24-hour delay between post submission and
appearance on the list.  Delays almost always have a destabilizing
effect, particularly in any system involving humans.  One thing that I
think would happen is that many more people would reply to any given
post.  There would be a period during which list members wouldn't
know if anyone else had replied or the content of replies, leading to
duplication of post content.  My guess is that this would take some
kind of cyclic form, with bursts of duplicate posts followed by
periods with no replies.  The resulting work for list elves would be
greater than it currently appears when looking at list history and
might also be unpredictable.


I would also like to suggest that encouragement of good posts might
help with both post and discussion quality.   Inclusion in the
catalogue mentioned by Carolyn might be encouragement enough.  Perhaps
the FP and Inish Alley played this role in the past?   The drawback is
that encouraging good posts would require more work by list elves. 

On the topic of the work required of list elves, I wonder if there is
any way to subdivide responsibilities into smaller chunks and involve
more people?  I'm sure that the pool of available volunteers
would be larger if the time commitment were smaller.   Like SSSusan, 
I couldn't commit to 10-15 hours a week, I have a job, kids, and
other volunteer obligations, but 2-3 hours a week might be possible.  
I'm always amazed at the volunteer organizations that effectively
deploy large numbers of volunteers.  I don't know how they do it
but surely someone does.

Finally, this discussion reminded me of a recent entry in Theresa
Nielsen Hayden's blog regarding conversations on the internet, 
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006036.html#006036
Not exactly the same circumstances, but some points may be relevant.

kjirstem - who greatly misses Kneasy's posts