Coblist Kahuna's posting policies :-)

[M J Epko]

At 02:18 PM 12/2/97 -0800, the Kahuna wrote:
>M.J. (duck f'ood, whatever :-)  You are welcome to add your two bits on
>netiquette if I have left anything out that you think needs saying.

	I think you covered it all, and thanks for doing so. Each list has its own
dynamic and style, and I'm more comfortable now that things are spelled out
for this one.

>The strawbale list lost some of it's best contributors for
>this very reason

	Yeah, it sucked helplessly watching it happen.

	Since it's not the case anymore that everybody here migrated from there,
some on this list might find the story illustrative:

	Great guy Joe McCabe, SB listowner for the first two years, had a very
hands-off approach that worked exceptionally well, because of the
exceptionally high-quality subscribers. He had to step in only occasionally
to get things back on topic when it strayed too far. Joe passed the reins
to me at about the 300 member-mark... about the time that it really started
exploding (there's over 800 people on the thing now). As the traffic
increased and increased, it hurt deeply to see several of the most valued
and experienced listmembers choose to leave rather than wade through more
off-topic and oft-repeated messages than they had time to manage. (Happily,
not all of them have left. And I've been very fortunate to meet a good
number of those people that have, and they all mourned the loss of a
usable, dignified, high-quality, focused forum.) (That said, the quality of
traffic on the SB list has been unusually good lately. I hope it's a trend.)

	Faced with an increasingly unmanageable list, I sought the counsel of
sharp people like Shannon; a couple configuration changes were instituted,
and some volunteers were enlisted to come up with a netiquette guideline
for the list which is automatically emailed to each new subscriber. It only
"sort-of" worked. Any community is only as civilized as its members. (My
use of the word "civilized" is interchangeable with the word "respectful"
in its most encompassing application.)

	Like Shannon is here, the current SB administrators (Matt and Becky) are
doing a terrific, largely-transparent job, but short of going to a
fully-moderated list, there's not a lot that can be done about the volume
(both off- and on-topic) without the help of the subscribers. The cob list
is a good forum and has some mighty good people on it. I'm sometimes
scoffed at for describing natural-builders at-large as a "community," but
frankly, that's what they are. That's what *you* are.

	The SB List guidelines (applicable to any list), for anybody who'd like to
look them over:
http://solstice.crest.org/efficiency/strawbale-list-archive/info.html

	For a load of netiquette presentations, go to Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/
and follow this chain ...

Computers and Internet:Internet:Information and Documentation:Beginner's
Guides:Netiquette



   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      M J Epko        duckchow at ix.netcom.com
      almost Wyoming, north of Nebraska, USA
               by way of New Mexico
      (not soon enough) - for now, Minnesota
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   The tongue of man is a twisty thing, 
   there are plenty of words there of every kind.
                               - Homer, The Iliad