On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 09:27:46AM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote: > * Dave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [03-22-07 08:36]: > > On Thu, Mar 22, 2007 at 12:26:15AM +0000, Paul Walker wrote: > > > On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 11:06:32PM +0100, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> > > > at this point, it would be quite a stretch to claim that this still has > > > > something to do with mutt, so preferably skip over it if you are not > > > > interested in discussing world security policy. > > > > > > Or you could take it off-list...? > > > > I'm trying to get us a Mutt-OT list (Steve: please? pretty please?). I > > think > > it'll make it a lot easier to take discussions off-list, while still > > allowing > > interested parties to continue watching (and participating in) the fun. > OFF-LIST as in: Dave <--> Oswald and/or Oswald <--> Dave Ad-hoc CC lists have lots of problems, not least of which is the lack of official organization, leading to a possible need to repost an entire discussion here when conclusions become relevant again to Mutt (which is the only reason that we're even pursuing our discussion). Also, there's no easy way to know if Oswald and I are the only people interested in our discussion. (Even if you post a request for "I'm interested"s, you won't get an accurate number, since you're only measuring the number of guys who are interested _enough_ in order to come out and say so on-list. It's a well-known fact that passive interest is far more common than active interest. The simple proof of said fact is that if we _do_ create a Mutt-OT list, a nontrivial number of people (i.e., more than two, which is where your system starts to break down) will probably stay subscribed to it more or less regularly.) > It can't get any easier than that. And would surely reduce > un-necessary traffic. I just showed that it'd actually _increase_ unnecessary traffic at least in the case where we'll probably wind up back on-topic later. (Remember, nobody on-list has to take our conclusions from off-list as fact without having a chance to review the original discussion that lead to said conclusions. That means people need (a) access to the archives of the discussion after the fact, so they can evaluate the arguments that lead to our conclusions, and (b) access to those discussions as they progress, so they can potentially offer input before we reach conclusions. The CC approach requires a lot of redundant traffic in order to accomplish that. (Just think of all the request/response emails we'd have to field at various points.) Adding a Mutt-OT list, on the other hand, allows us to easily keep track of discussions that go off-topic, and to bring them back on-list when they come back on-topic by simply hopping back and forth between the lists. People who are only subscribed to Mutt-Dev will only get Mutt-relevant parts of the discussion, while people who are subscribed to both will be able to follow the discussion from start to finish, and contribute at will, without having to ask the two of us at the start of the discussion to add them to an ad-hoc CC list, and for all of us to group-reply everything. (Dude, we're not in the stone age anymore. This is what lists are made for.) > No need to introduce complexity to a simple > situation. Adding another instance of an existing system isn't "introducing complexity to a simple system." Going from 2N to 3N isn't an increase in complexity. (In reality, we're already considerably higher than 2N.) - Dave
