At 5:41 PM 2/25/96, Chris Claborne wrote:
I filter to an unread area and then try to read once per week. I know that I trim off good articles while trying to trim the fat off. If you can't exercise restraint, how about putting "junk" as the first word in your subject.
Ah, but where was the "junk" as the first word of your post? You see, therein lies the reason these labelling schemes almost never work. Few people think there own stuff is "junk," else presumably they wouldn't post it. You can bet your bottom e-dollar that Jim Bell won't label his posts about assassination politics or nuclear bomb high explosive triggers as "junk." Nor that I will label my own stuff as "junk." About like asking people to label themselves as "turkeys" just so we can deal with crowds better. Frankly, I think we waste more time arguing about how to improve the "signal to noise ratio," ephemeral a concept at this is, than it takes to simply delete posts each of us various dislikes. The notion that we can "nudge" other people into only posting the kinds of articles we all want to see is flawed: there is no single type of good article, and one man's "junk" is another man's "gold." --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."