Some details on a moderated pianotech

[Andrew Rudoff]

> If we really decided to make individual filtering work, it would have to 
> be based on an agreed marker ("OT: ") and individuals sticking 
> faithfully to that protocol. Lord knows they're unreliable enough at 
> noticing when the subject matter in the body of their post nothing to do 
> with what subject field. Should we depend on them to make sure an "OT" 
> has a ":" and a " " after it? Don't even mention a person's commitment 
> to make sure that their judgement of what needs the "OT" stamp will keep 
> everyone else happy.

This has been the issue.  Adding an OT marker in the Subject field
has been suggested many times over the years (just look in the archives
to see the previous dicussions).  The issue isn't whether people can
filter on an OT tag, it is what Bill decribes above: posters aren't
sticking to the convention.  (And folks trying to get posters to follow the
OT convention has caused much more unlabeled OT traffic!)

> I agree. It's only the folks who choose PTx-m whose mail delivery will 
> be affected. Those of us with the regular PTx will able to post back and 
> forth in real time, leaving the "-m" people in the dust.

Right.  The new list shouldn't impact you unless you want it to.  Think
of it this way:  wouldn't it be nice if someone would go through our pianotech
archives and filter out all the cruft so that searches on the archives only
turn up on-topic information?  Well, that's all I'm proposing -- someone will
read the pianotech posts and decide which ones belong in the filtered version
of the archives.  Those filtered archives are implemented as a list called
pianotech-m and anyone who wants to watch messages get added to the filtered
archives is free to subscribe to pianotech-m.

> So, yes, I'm on board with the parallel lists, as described by Andy. 
> (It's actually not that far from David Skolnik's idea of last winter.)

Search the archives for "pianotech-m" and you'll see the idea goes much
farther back.  We've talked about all this many times in the past.  So
let's try it out and see how it goes.

I'll let people know when it is ready -- probably another two weeks since
I'm about to hop of a plane for a business trip...

-andy