On 4/19/06, Eric Hodel <drbrain / segment7.net> wrote:
>
> The last thing I need is two copies of every message in my mailbox.
>
> I wish the gateway would just go away.  I always see an increase in
> the signal to noise ratio when the gateway goes down.
>
> I also wish the ruby forum gateway would go away, it has reduced the
> signal to noise ratio a bunch, and a bunch of people post without
> context making it impossible to figure out what they're talking about.

I'm normally one to promote free speech, but I have to say Eric makes
a good point here, and I agree. This mailing list has gotten so out of
hand I have almost 2000 unread messages, and I'm pretty anal about
keeping up to date on all my email. It would be well over 2000 if I
hadn't made a concerted effort to keep up with today's mail.

I think the extra effort it takes to actually sign up for the mailing
list and send an email to the right address is a good thing, as it
tends to increase the signal to noise ratio, as Eric says.

When any Joe can pop into the newsgroup or the Ruby Forum and send a
question in 5 seconds, they are less apt to stop and ask themselves:
"how might I figure this out for myself?" There are years of archives
containing answers to probably 80% of what is asked here everyday, yet
no one seems to search. Part of the problem might be that the scat.rb
interface leaves a bit to be desired (and is slow for anyone not in
Japan it seems...at least for me), but we also have Google Groups (but
of course that depends on the gateway for all messages to be
archived.)

I'm not sure what the solution is here, beyond extremely smart,
SPAM-like filtering in our mail clients to cut down on the junk we
have to read. On that note: how do most people on this list cope with
all the messages? Because it seems like reading all of them would be
at least a half-time job (I don't know, 4 hours or so a day.) I just
don't have time for that, but then there is the concern over missing
the few gems that actually provide good information. Maybe if there
was a Slashdot-like system for rating threads somewhere, then if you
waited until the end of the day you could just filter on highly rated
threads or messages and just read those, marking the rest as read as
well.

Any other ideas?

Ryan