Subject: Recent Posting Stats

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 04:45:04 -0800 (PST)

Over the past 8 days, I've received 526 postings on this list from 54
individuals, including this many from people posting 10 or more messages:

  10 From: Rob Austein <[email-masked]>
  11 From: Mark Smith <[email-masked]>
  13 From: [email-masked]
  15 From: "Richard Draves" <[email-masked]>
  15 From: [email-masked]
  23 From: Brian Haberman <[email-masked]>
  23 From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
  27 From: "Hesham Soliman (EAB)" <[email-masked]>
  27 From: "Tony Hain" <[email-masked]>
  29 From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
  35 From: "Bound, Jim" <[email-masked]>
  57 From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
  99 From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>

-- George Mitchell ([email-masked])

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2002 15:11:44 -0500

Folks,

The stats George posted are well worth thinking hard about.

When there are so many postings on a list in such a short time, the
following is inevitable:

- folks don't read them all anymore. I'm sure folks make decisions on
  which messages to delete unread based on their opinion of an
  individual poster's typical signal-to-noise ratio based on recent
  and past postings. In other words, if you want other people to read
  your postings (which I would assume is the point), less is often
  more.

- postings are often no longer intended to better understand or tease
  out a better understanding of what the *real* issues and thinking
  are on an issue. They just become shouting matches. This helps no
  one (and indeed, tends to push folk away).
  
- The purpose of the WG is to find consensus and a reasonable
  engineering result.  One can't do that if folk are not listening or
  understanding each other. 

- it's one thing to understand someone else's view point, but disagree
  with it. This is a very reasonable thing to do. When this happens,
  its often good at some oint to simply agree to disagree and stop
  posting.

- It's another to disagree with another viewpoint to the point that
  whenever it is mentioned (or even hinted at by someone) a long
  response containing an oft-repeated rant on a particular view point
  immediately happens.

- I can't help but wonder if for some people, the more they post, the
  more they think they are influencing what is happening. This simply
  isn't the case in my experience, at least not in a positive
  sense. *What* one says, matters a lot more than how many times it is
  said or how loudly.

Folks, please please please *think* before you post, reread what you
post (before you post it), and ask yourself whether the posting
actually sheds any light on the discussion, whether it should just be
taken off line, or maybe simply not said at all.

Thomas

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From: Ignatios Souvatzis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 11:06:11 +0100

hello,

>   your postings (which I would assume is the point), less is often

Yes, this is the case.

A thread such as the one (well, the three) about usage of site-local
addresses is simply unreadable. When such thread reaches that amount
of volume, I can't but delete it completely or just select a few key
writers, based on past experience, and read messages near the end of
subthreads hoping that they're citing key arguments of other posters
when answering.

Not finding this, I either have to base my opinion on my own bias or
just ignore the issue completely.

	-is