[pp.int.general] This mailing list is a limited and fragile resource

[Zbigniew Łukasiak]

If this mailing list was a river then everybody would agree that we
cannot let anyone flow anything he wishes into it, no questions asked.
But in the case of a communication channel like this list there is a
tendency to think that because the technical bandwidth of it is so
much bigger than we use now - then there is no need to limit the usage
in any way. But the mailing list is useful only as much as people read
the mails that are sent to it - and the amount of time people can
spend on reading is limited.

Without any rules this mailing list is wasted by trolls and flamewars
just like a river would be wasted by pollution if we had no rules
about that.

In this community there is an aversion to moderating of mailig lists
because of the fear of censorship - but even having an automatic rule
like 'one person can post only once a day to this mailing list' would
improve dramatically the situation on this mailing list. Would that be
censorship? And this is just one example - if we are serious about
'doing politics', about designing rules that govern our societies -
then we should first design rules to govern our mailing list - rules
that would avoid the censorship accusations and that would maintain a
high signal to noise ratio.

-- 
Zbigniew Łukasiak
http://brudnopispirata.pl/