Subject: Re: FFML population control
From: Damon Casale
Date: 5/16/1997, 3:40 PM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

On Fri, 16 May 1997, Mousse Lee wrote:

Stop looking at me like that.  :P  No, I mean it.  This list has gotten
far, FAR too big.  No one can reasonably read even a significant
percentage of the list traffic coming through consistently, day to day,
unless he or she has a GREAT deal of free time on his or her hands.  And
that doesn't include actually *writing* fics instead of merely
reading/C&C'ing them, or whatever.

	I go for the mass deletion theory.

Yup.  I know I do.

Everyone would be free to pick one (or two, or whatever) sublist to
subscribe to, and get to know people.  Granted, this might tend to make
things a little cliqueish, but I think the benefits GREATLY outweigh the
pitfalls.

Comments?

	It would be too difficult to manage multiple lists, especially
without differences of content.  If you said perhaps one list for all Ranma
fanfic and another for everything else, that could perhaps work.  Still
doubtful.
	There would be no way for people on one list to know what's
happening on another list.  No way to determine which list one would like
to be on.  Division is not the answer.

There *would* be differences of content, most likely.  That's not the
point.  They should all be equally good choices to sub to.  I'm trying
to come up with a good plan to reduce people's incoming mail, if they so
choose.  I don't want to subdivide based on Ranma/everything else,
because that wouldn't accomplish that goal, except for people who aren't
interested in Ranma, or who aren't interested in everything else.

As for figuring out which list to be on, one could sub to all of them,
look at the content and the cliques forming, and make a choice that way.

	However... it has given me an idea... don't look at me like that
either.  >=P  ML mail falls into three basic catagories: fanfics, spam, fic
related.

Yup.

	What I assume most people desire is fics getting read.

That's not the only consideration.  Another is socialization, which is
practically (and I do mean "PRACTICALLY") impossible with this many
people.  I just don't have the time, nor the inclination, ANY MORE, to
get to know the other people on the list.  There are just too many faces
out there, and they all blend together, almost.  It didn't used to be
that way, and I'm trying to get back to what worked.

Since most
people can't read everything that comes down the pipe, many decide to read
nothing they don't recognize.
	Perhaps what we need is a weekly review of new fics.  Actually not
so much a review, but a summery that would be posted on a regular basis.
	The author of a fic would write a paragraph or so about their work
and mail that to one moderator-type who would collect the summeries and
make the weekly post.
	This way people could just read the weekly post and choose which
fics to read without having to sort through all the actually fics.  It's
less biased than a review and people will read fics that interest them.

We still wouldn't necessarily have the time to read everything we were
interested in.  While this is a GREAT idea to help people sort out the
fics on the list, it doesn't help reduce the sheer volume.  Instead, we
should subdivide the list, and store the fics, and their summaries, at
the 100% Anime Fanfiction site.  THAT would work.  That would reduce
incoming mail, and promote socialization more than anything else.
People would still get the C&C they need.  In fact, they might get
*more* this way because there would be less of a tendency to stick with
certain authors, because there would be less volume of fics to read
overall on each sublist.  People would have more *time* to read the
unknowns.

	Many of the fics I used to read, I read because I saw a review of
them first.  I have 20 megs of unread fics that I haven't touched yet, so
I'm already trigger happy on the delete key.

I have about 2/3rds that much.  Most are BGC, some are Nuku Nuku.  The
only reason I haven't read them yet is because there are simply so many
of them, and so little time after dealing with the immense volume of
incoming mail from this one list.  It didn't used to be that way.  It
doesn't HAVE to be that way.  If anyone can come up with a better
suggestion to reduce incoming mail volume and at the same time promote
socialization, I'd be all for it, but this is the best I can come up
with, myself.

Any more comments or ideas?

Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^