jss@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Shapiro) (11/06/85)
The suggestion by tmoody to impose length limits, it seems to me, bears particular merit when applied to the problem of followups. It would cause people to think a lot more about how they respond and how much they include in their responses. This, I think, would be an positive change. Perhaps the way to deal with sources is to set up a moderator to whom one would send a brief discription, along the lines of an abstract. The moderator could post the abstract and see if the response via mail indicates posting is worthwhile. If the response is sufficiently high, the moderator would tell the author to mail him the source/binhex/whatever for posting. Otherwise, the moderator would provide a list of the names of those people who want the item to the author for mailing. While this imposes a propagation delay, it does limit unnecessary postings, and sources tend to be nonconversational items, so propagation time may be less important than in other forums. Is this feasible in terms of human time involved? I have never had occasion to be a moderator, so I wouldn't know. Jon Shapiro Haverford College -- Jonathan S. Shapiro Haverford College "It doesn't compile pseudo code... What do you expect for fifty dollars?" - M. Tiemann