What Price Success? Improving Posting Quality on HPfGU

[naamagatus]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...> 
> 
> My personal take is
> (1) our list volume is largely due to the sheer number of people 
on the list, and very much less due to a handful of individual 
posters cluttering it up.
> (2) the elves already monitor *egregious* instances of list-spam-
behavior.
> (3) listmembers have the capability to read subject lines, *and* 
the technology to delete them unread, so putting the burden of 
controlling the flow on the list administration, when it is entirely 
within the power of individual listmembers to control which they 
choose to *read,* seems a little self-centered. Why should the 
content of the list be affected (and it will be) by making it harder 
for active posters to "portion out" their posts, and likely diluting 
the percentage of really engaging posts, just so people don't have 
>to delete so much?
> 

I don't think that the daily quoat measure was suggested in order to 
cut down the list volume, but to improve list quality. A lot of the 
posts are not well thought out or well researched (mostly, both). 
When I see several posts from one listee, I tend to not read any of 
them - which is a pity. Three or so posts a day is plenty - I don't 
think it will have an adverse effect on the flow, but will encourage 
people to think a bit more about what they're writing.

As for the technical side (counting posts each day, etc.): why do we 
have to be so anal about it? Why not announce the new rule, and then 
see whether there are listees who consistently break this rule? This 
can be done via weekly averages rather than counting posts daily. 
The checks can be done fairly randomly too, or based on impression. 
Often people will post several posts one after another - so it's 
easy to visually see that they're in excess. The important thing is 
not that no one ever posts more than 3 posts a day, but that *on 
average* people don't post more than 3 posts a day. 



Naama