Re: [ga] Motion to the Chair

[Sandy Harris <sandy@storm.ca>]

DannyYounger@cs.com wrote:

> I took it upon myself to tabulate the comments posted to our list in the last
> month.  From June 8 to July 8 there were 1021 posts to the main GA list by 62
> individuals.   Six people accounted for half of all the posts.

That sort of thing is common in various distributions. In linguistics, the
curve for word frequency is called Zipf's Law. The top two words in English
are 'the' and 'of' at 6% and 3% of total words. The top dozen or so cover half
the total words used. Same for character frequency, ' ' alone is about 14%, 
distribution of incomes (Pareto's Law, small part of population gets most),
popualation density (millions in cities, empty hinterland), ...

> Looking at the archives on a day-by-day basis, I merely totalled the number
> of posts per person on each day (as listed in the archives) and noted that
> all of these six individuals exceeded the daily posting limit on several
> occasions.
> 
> 8 violations -- 130 posts total -- Jeff Williams ...
> 7 violations -- 102 posts total -- William Walsh ...
> 4 violations --  92 posts total -- Eric Dierker ...
> 4 violations --  69 posts total -- Jim Fleming ...
> 3 violations --  60 posts total -- Patrick Corliss ...
> 2 violations --  66 posts total -- Jefsey Morfin ...
> 
> ... Perhaps a maximum of two posts per day per list
> would be sensible, if vigorously enforced by our list monitors.

No. That's absurd. So X starts a thread, I reply, Y chimes in and I comment.
Then X comments on my reply. You expect me to shut up then because I've had
my two post limit? Get serious. I'm going to answer.

For that matter, I'd be quite unlikely to respect a 5-post limit in a lively
thread.

If the thread does not interest you, skip it. If you consider X, Y or me an
utter idiot, ignore them.

> It is quite evident that we have a problem.  I would appreciate your comments
> on this possible solution.

Methinks the "solution" sucks.
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