What Price Success? Improving Posting Quality on HPfGU

[carolynwhite2]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Regan" <timregan at m...> 
wrote:
> 
Carolyn and Barry's 
> comments strike me as wanting to see the list as a peer reviewed 
> academic journal. All posts would be reviewed by elves before 
> hitting the list. I spend my day trying (and mostly failing) to get 
> published in academic conferences and journals and I really do not 
> want to see the list go that way. I do not see the list as the 
place 
> where well rounded theories are published, but the place where well 
> rounded theories are born.
> 

Carolyn:
Tim, a point of clarification. The proposal to review all posts 
before publication was purely to enable the elves to more easily 
enforce the *existing* HBF list rules on snipping, headings, OT-ness, 
tone, FAQs etc, nothing more. 

Peer review journals operate by sending papers to others for comment, 
criticism and re-writing before publication, nothing of that sort was 
suggested at all - unless a post came in that flouted all the list 
rules, in which case the elves would probably be glad to catch it 
before it hit the list and caused ripples.

As I understood the official response, it is an idea that can't be 
considered because there are not enough elves to do the job. This is 
a pity because in other respects it has a good deal of merit in 
maintaining basic standards on a large and busy list. 

There is also a significant technical problem in that Yahoo only 
allows 15 moderators at a time, whatever the size of a group. This is 
clearly not enough to manage a list this size, even if there were 
enough willing volunteer elves available in the first place.

As regards your larger points about the intrinsic nature of such 
lists, I am inclined to agree - hence the title of our paper 'What 
Price Success?'. It's not easy to maintain good quality discussion in 
very large groups, and to pick up the party analogy, maybe not the 
point in the first place.

Carolyn