In message <m0nTiSl-0001y6C@rmsdell.ftl.fl.us> you write:

...

is problem: break the current list into topic areas.

A similar situation occurred a while ago on the Extropians list. Many people were complaining about excess volume, people were unsubscribing, and there was talk of splitting the list into many sublists. There are some problems with sublists. Many people would subscribe to all the lists, or many of them. List management chores ((un)subscriptions, bounces, address changes, etc) would increase. Many messages would get "cross-posted" to several or all lists, and thus would appear many times in everyone's mail box, thus even increasing the number of messages to sift through. There are other problems, which I will not mention now.

I proposed a simple solution which is in use now, and has greatly increased the quality of the list, makes it easy for everyone to only read the messages they want, and does not require deployment of any new software. The actual volume has not decreased, probably it even increased. But the information flow is so much more manageable.

The solution is the use of prefixes in Subject: lines. When you post, prefix your Subject: line with a short "tag" such as "ANON:", "DCNET:", "PGP:", "DCASH:", or others. For example, you would see subjects like

PGP: new version available ANON: an new idea for anonymous replies

etcetera. When reading your mail, just have your mailer sort the mail by Subject: line (if your mailer can't do that, get a new mailer), and all messages about PGP will come together, all messages about anonymous remailers will be in one area, etc. Then it's easy to delete them all without reading, to save them to a file for future reference, or to read them if that is a topic you are interested in.

The beauty of this system is it's anarchistic nature. There is no need for people to maintain an official list of prefixes, or to vote on new ones (as is done with newsgroups), or to ask someone to create one (as would be necessary for mailing sublists). There's no need for the group as a whole to agree on anything. Just start using them. Try to find a logical prefix for each message that matches its subject area.

Most likely people posting on the same topic will choose same or similar prefix. After some initial fluctuation, different prefixes for the same topic will converge to one that will become customary for that topic.

New prefixes will pop up every once in a while, and the ones not used will fade from the group memory. This is a flexible, dynamic system.

As a starting point I will make up a prefix for each of the sublists you proposed (if you don't like my prefix, use a different one!):

ANON: anon/pseudo_cpunks Anoymity/Pseudonymity REMAIL: remailers_cpunks Remailer Technology DCNET: dining_cpunks DC Nets RANDOM: random-cpunks Random Generators DCASH: digimoney_cpunks Digital Banking PGP: pgp_cpunks PGP App/Current Info FLAME:-) ziplips_cpunks Crypto-Censorship WHISTLE: fweee_cpunks Whistleblowers (The "Keith Peterson Area"?) MEET: physmtgs_cpunks Physical Meetings/Conferences

Here are some more: META: discussions on the list about the list itself, such as this post, or the post I am replying to which suggested splitting the list. Complaints about high volume, messages saying something does or does not belong on the list, etc, would use this prefix.

ANNOUNCE: important messages that everyone may be interested in.

FRIV: for jokes, parodies, other frivolous posts.

If a post fits in more than one subject area, the main prefix should be put first, for sorting purposes. The other prefix(es) would follow, separated by slashes. For example "PGP/ANNOUNCE: new version available" or "RANDOM/FRIV: why not just flip coins?". This is in no way mandatory, it's just a convention that developed on Extropians, and it may be advantageous to use it, to ease further processing.

Some other ideas:

You can use procmail, elm filter, slocal, or any other mail processing tool to handle messages with different prefixes.

For example if you are a very busy person, or are reading your mail over a low-speed link, you may want to save all REMAIL/ANNOUNCE messages in a "remailers" file, delete all FRIV, META, and FLAME messages, and for each other prefix, save the message to an appropriate folder for reading later.

If you were not interested in discussion, but wanted to keep up on what's going on, you would have the filter delete all the messages from the mailin list that do not have an ANNOUNCE: prefix.

Or, if you have enough time and/or are using a high-speed connection, you may just sort all the messages by Subject: thereby lumping all the messages on a subject together. Then you can decide which you are going to read first, which ones you want to delete, etc.

If this idea takes off, and most people will start using prefixes, further evolution of the concept is possible. For example a group of extropians are developing some software on the list host machine that will let people customise their subscription, for example choosing not to receive messages with a certain prefix, not to receive messages that don't have a prefix, or choosing to receive only some selected prefixes, plus any new prefixes that come to use.

All this is sometime in the future. Right now, let's start by just prefixing each subject line with an appropriate prefix.

-- Yanek Martinson yanek@novavax.nova.edu

I fully support this call for prefixes by subject class. Tony +-----------------+-------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Tony Kidson | ** PGP 2.1 Key by request ** | Voice +44 81 466 5127 | | Morgan Towers, | The Cat has had to move now | E-Mail(in order) | | Morgan Road, | as I've had to take the top | tony@morgan.demon.co.uk | | Bromley, | off of the machine. | tny@cix.compulink.co.uk | | England BR1 3QE |Honda ST1100 -=<*>=- DoD# 0801 | 100024.301@compuserve.com| +-----------------+-------------------------------+--------------------------+