OT Posts (was Re: Yeah!!!) )

[Bill Ballard]

At 9:18 AM -0700 2/15/04, Phillip Ford wrote:
>I've already gotten overbearing on this subject, so I guess another 
>post about it won't make me much more so (I'm probably being 
>filtered out anyway by 281+ people).  I see your point.  However, I 
>have some problems with it:

I was just musing, and it was just a scenario. But one to remind us 
that, given that what we all come down to on this list is digital 
text sent across the net, there's no way of telling what's really 
happening. (As I told RicB privately, the high-school cheerleader who 
gave me her home address in the chat room last night is probably a 
pedophile priest. <g>)

>1.  There are posts that might be construed as not directly piano 
>related that I think are beneficial to the list (OT Mapology), as 
>opposed to others that might cause the list to blow up, assuming 
>they're not being filtered out (OT Bush).  If one were to filter all 
>OT posts one would miss out on both.  However, if a majority of the 
>list wants to allow anything as long as OT is in the subject line, 
>then I'll play by those rules and filter all those things out and 
>lose some potentialy beneficial stuff, or I'll unsubscribe.

Agreed. I think the best we can hope for is that people will not 
knowingly choose to waste our time. When they do, we can ignore them.

>2.  In order to filter you still have to download.  This is not a 
>big problem for me, but I think it may be for people with slower 
>connections.  I also think the sheer volume of posts keeps some 
>potentially valuable contributors away.

Good point. I forget how spoiled I am by DSL. Agreed that some 
portion of the list is still doing dial-up (mainly in rural areas), 
but what fraction within that is running with a modem slower than 
28kb? "keeps some potentially valuable contributors away"? Again, how 
do we know? It gets back to my point about 19 of us wringing our 
hands over an issue which doesn't exist for 281 of us.

"In order to filter you still have to download"? This is a mailing 
list, not a newsgroup or browser-accessed forum. You got to download 
it simply to read it, anyway.

>3.  I don't know how the digests work as I've never subscribed in 
>that way.  Do they still have to look through all this stuff?

What digest does is wait until the accumulation of posts arriving at 
the list's server reach a certain size. They're then collected in a 
single text file, usually with a "table of contents" at the top, and 
sent out as a single email. Yes, someone receiving these digests 
still has to look them over. Having to look through tall this stuff 
has to get done, when the list posts arrive in "summary form" (ie., 
digest format) or as individual "records" (ie., regular format).

>4.  There's still the matter of the archives.  All this stuff just 
>means more data to be searched through to find what you want 
>(perhaps not a problem with current search engines).

Agreed, the archives don't need to be any larger than necessary, and 
they don;t need to be another example of "fools' names appearing in 
fools' places". But take the query "voicing NY Stwy hammers". Even if 
we could wave a magic wand and make all the junk posts disappear, 
that query would sill produce 25MB of posts, all of it ON-topic which 
we would then have to further sift through to get what we were 
looking through. The junk gets left behind in the first round, and 
subsequent rounds are faster. But it doesn't change the fact that at 
a certain point, the job has to be transferred from the search 
engines to us human beings, and were left with a week's worth reading 
before we can say that what we were looking for was there to be found 
and that in fact we'd found it.

>And perhaps searching subject lines would not be a problem if people 
>were more careful to change subject headings when they change 
>topics, such as changing from hammers to apes, so that when you are 
>searching for 'hammers' you don't get apes.

Would that everyone on the list were as aware as you of how dependant 
good info retrieval was on properly observed subject headings. This 
is a bigger waste of time for me than posts which should have been 
labeled OT but which weren't.

>5.  As far as I know, Dale doesn't have a Porsche.  He's just fantasizing.

Don't pop my bubble here. I was fantasizing that his boards had 25% 
more resonance than anyone else's and it was because of his Porsche. 
(Bet you can't guess what I'm wearing right now.....)

I've been on this list since Fall of '95, and for all that we may 
complain now, it has definitely improved and grown up. (Except for 
the people who think that someone else should in charge of making the 
list what these people think it should be. <g>)

At 6:37 PM -0500 2/15/04, Erwinspiano@aol.com wrote:
>Hey My other car is an expeditiion

Oh god, don't get me started on SUVs....... <g>

Bill Ballard RPT
NH Chapter, P.T.G.

".......true more in general than specifically"
     ...........Lenny Bruce, spoofing a radio discussion of the Hebrew 
roots of Calypso music
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