Breaking RSU into many categories

> it aint that hard people,just look at the posters on this thread!they
> are all MEMBERS....except the Ardvark and he's cool because he's also
> the only non-member to ever post in the "just conversation"section.

AFAICS *all* posts appear in a single NG. Are they filtered into
different places already on the website? Interesting.

Might try the website for a bit, choosing a really offensive avatar
(any photo of me will do)...


Arnold the Aardvark

[rhysling]

Ok- we're all invited over to Jagur's! I'm bringing brazed asparagus- so you'll just have to make something else. Where, exactly, is Oregon, anyway?

-Christopher

"Stand BACK Uni-Boy! -that's no ordinary Tea Pot- it harbors THE TERRIBLE TEMPEST!"

[yoopers]

Originally posted by rhysling
Where, exactly, is Oregon, anyway?

Oregon is about 20 minutes northwest of Rochelle and is home to some very important deer hunting land.

B

> to all you non-members out there,I SAY THIS:Punching your name and
> password into the forum is alot less confusing than sorting e-mail....
> deal with it.the majority of threads are started by
> Members,MEMBERS!!!!!!

Please explain how being a member will solve the problem.

JF

[jagur]

Originally posted by John Foss

Please explain how being a member will solve the problem.

this has been explaned before,i'll try now.when you log in all the threads are there,from beginning to end in almost real time.

there is this big list of threads and you simply click on the ones you want to read and dont click on the ones like Marmite (unless your into that kind of punishment )

there is also a cool little feature that remembers where you have been and puts a black dot on the threads that you've posted in.you can also see the time and date of the last post,and who the last poster was,all on the same screen.

[sendhair]

originally posted by John Foss:
Please explain how being a member will solve the problem.

I'll leave it to others to answer that, but in the meantime,...

Would becoming a member be so bad?

It might eliminate more annoying things for the administrators; like spam, and multiple posts caused by poorly tweaked email programs, and viruses, and trolls and lurkers posting, if everyone were to register and ... employers might appreciate it too!

First, let me re-explain the problem, which I think many of the posters
don't understand.

Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, someone started a unicycling mailing
list. I can't remember who it was! A guy in Arizona I think. We should dig
up this history. He later turned things over to Beirne Konarski.

I don't remember what the mailing list was called, but I'm pretty sure it's
what came first. After this had been popular for a while, people worked on
getting a Usenet newsgroup formed. They went through the process of
requesting a group name, and got the thing set up: rec.sport.unicycling. All
of this happened before the World Wide Web was in common use, at a time when
AOL members didn't even have Web access.

And then the mailing list and newsgroup were connected, through an email
gateway. So people could read all the messages either with a newsreader, or
through their inbox via email. And it was good. And the messages were
plentiful, but not too much to handle.

It went along like that for a while, with a slow but constant growth. And
then came Gilby, with a grand idea for an easy-to-use Web-based interface
for all the unicyclists to communicate. And he built Unicyclist.com. And it
was good. And the forums became very popular, probably surpassing the number
of users of the newsgroup and email users.

And the messages on Unicyclist.com, as well as in a newsreader, were divided
by topic name. And the users could read what they wanted, and ignore topics
they didn't. And talk endlessly about how to screw in pedals, and about
exotic foods, and about whether they were smokers and what they smoked.

This popularity caused the email users, some of whom have been around for
eight years or more, to lately get an ever-increasing amount of messages in
their inboxes. Messages that have grown in numbers to the point where it has
become too much for most users to deal with. So most of the email
subscribers have left, and there aren't that many left.

I like receiving the group via email. It gives me a chance to at least
glance at every message, roughly in the order that they are written (though
initial posts always take longer than the replies). It helps me to keep a
finger on the pulse of the online unicycling community.

So I have resisted unsubscribing from the email newsgroup. But at this point
I am hanging on by a thread. There is just too much volume. I don't have a
problem with the content, or even so much the fact that unicyclists may want
to talk about non-unicycling topics. But the volume has gone beyond where
the few remaining email people can keep up with it.

So this is not a problem with the way the Web-based forums work. I think
they work great. I don't think it's a problem for the newsreader users
either, but I don't use a newsreader, so I can't commit to that. It's just a
volume problem for the email users.

The question is, can we solve this with something other than simply giving
up on the email version? My feeling is that if I don't have it in my inbox,
I will never spend as much time looking at the posts as I do now. I think we
can find a better way.

Currently, the newsgroup (rec.sport.unicycling, and all the forum topics
under it) shares all its content through an email gateway. The popularity of
the forums has created a much higher volume of messages, and made it much
easier to talk endlessly on many topics.

So the question is, should rec.sport.unicycling, and its associated email
connection, be directly connected to all of that, or can we split it somehow
that only certain topics go through to those users?

Hopefully this explains the problem. Since I have run long here, I'll use a
separate post to offer my comments on the solutions being proposed so far.

Stay on top,
John Foss
President, Unicycling Society of America
Director, International Unicycling Federation
jfoss@unicycling.com
www.unicycling.com

[sendhair]

originally posted by John Foss:
My feeling is that if I don't have it in my inbox, I will never spend as much time looking at the posts as I do now.

John, do you mean you that you feel you spend too much time looking at posts (I'm guessing "yes" here), or that you'll feel left out and disconnected if you don't get every post via email? I hope you don't have to unsubscribe, and I wasn't suggesting that noone should access this forum via email. What email program do you use? Using filters, you should be able to command your email program to accept the email you want and automatically delete what you don't want. You could, for example, require that any email coming from the unicyclist.com forums to at least have the word "uni" in it...

Just a suggestion.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be changes... it's not my forum site.

Seems like a compromise could be made that would be the least cumbersome to all involved. In the end, it's Gilby who can decide that best.

All the same,...
If there is anyone here who has never ventured "off-topic", let them cast the first stone!

> when you log in all the
> threads are there,from beginning to end in almost real time.

Understood. But this does not solve the email problem (I'm already a forum
member). I'll send up another post with some ideas for this.

JF

> John, do you mean you that you feel you spend too much time looking at
> posts (I'm guessing "yes" here)

Darn good guess!

>or that you'll feel left out and disconnected if you don't get every
> post via email?

No, but I like to at least have a glimpse of them all. This tells me what
people are talking about, which topics are generating the most interest, and
who's talking about what. All this without having to enter each of the
various topic areas.

Of course at this point, entering those topic areas is going to be easier
than slogging through my inbox every morning, especially on Monday mornings,
or when I've been away for a while...

> What email program do you use? Using filters,
> you should be able to command your email program to accept
> the email you want and automatically delete what you don't want.

I use Outlook, which I have heard described as "a petri dish for viruses."
It's what we use at my office, so I use it at home as well. It make it very
handy to file and save messages by topic.

Filters are only as good as the logic you use to define them. I'd rather
delete things than hope my filters are doing the right job. I delete all my
spam too.

> at least have the word "uni" in it...

I'd rather not. This would eliminate a lot of Marmite, but might also take
away Carol McLean's link to an interesting painting, for example.

> I'm not saying that there shouldn't be changes...
> it's not _my_ forum site.

It's all of our forum. Though it has been privately owned and set up, I
believe Gilby is doing it with the unicycling community in mind, so please
share your ideas and needs.

> If there is anyone here who has *never* ventured "off-topic",
> let them cast the first stone!

Not I! And my issue isn't really with stuff being off-topic as much as it is
with the high volume. If everybody were getting it in their inbox we
wouldn't have this problem. Before the forums came along, I think most of us
were using email rather than a newsreader, but now it doesn't make sense any
more. I think what I'd like to see is only a subset of the forum content
being shared through the email gateway. So the question is, how to define
that subset?

Hand-typing a prefix onto new subject lines is not going to fly. Too many
people simply won't do it, or will forget, or will not even know they're
supposed to. This idea has been proposed before, back when we didn't have a
Web version.

I agree with the people suggesting to keep the list of categories short. We
have builders, we have beginners, we have "misc. (Marmite & such), we have
buyers.

Maybe only the News and Announcements area should be connected to the email
users. If more people used this service, there would be more momentum among
us unicyclists to use it properly, and to post actual appropriate stuff into
that area. Then nothing would need to change in the rest of the forums area,
unless people would prefer a little more breakdown.

So I guess what I'm saying is that the rec.sport.unicycling section has
grown way too large for easy email use. Would it be possible to connect it
instead to the News and Announcements forum area, and disconnect it from
rec.sport.unicycling?

Then people would have the option of getting the "news" type of messages in
their inbox without being inundated, while they could still go to
Unicyclist.com to read all the other stuff.

Stay on top,
John Foss
the Uni-Cycone
jfoss@unicycling.com
www.unicycling.com

"I was burning his dinner when I was 17, and now I'm still burning it when
I'm 52." -- Brett Bymaster's mom Rita, at Brett's wedding reception on July
13, talking about how she met her husband

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On Friday 23 August 2002 01:04 pm, John Foss wrote:
> First, let me re-explain the problem, which I think many of the posters
> don't understand.

A very nice history. I'll fill in some details.

>
> Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, someone started a unicycling mailing
> list. I can't remember who it was! A guy in Arizona I think. We should dig
> up this history. He later turned things over to Beirne Konarski.

I took it from Terry Jones of Santa Fe, NM. He asked someone to take it over,
and I said I would if no one else wanted to.

>
> I don't remember what the mailing list was called, but I'm pretty sure it's
> what came first. After this had been popular for a while, people worked on
> getting a Usenet newsgroup formed. They went through the process of
> requesting a group name, and got the thing set up: rec.sport.unicycling.
> All of this happened before the World Wide Web was in common use, at a time
> when AOL members didn't even have Web access.

It was called the unicycling mailing list. Catchy name, huh?

I managed it by hand via an alias file at Kent State on a UNIX server, which
should give you an idea of the size of the list. Later on Ken Fuchs set up
the list using majordomo at his ISP and things were much nicer. He also did
the legwork to set up the newsgroup.

>
> And then the mailing list and newsgroup were connected, through an email
> gateway. So people could read all the messages either with a newsreader, or
> through their inbox via email. And it was good. And the messages were
> plentiful, but not too much to handle.

The gateway was erratic, which helped on the load :-)


>
> So this is not a problem with the way the Web-based forums work. I think
> they work great. I don't think it's a problem for the newsreader users
> either, but I don't use a newsreader, so I can't commit to that. It's just
> a volume problem for the email users.
>
> The question is, can we solve this with something other than simply giving
> up on the email version? My feeling is that if I don't have it in my inbox,
> I will never spend as much time looking at the posts as I do now. I think
> we can find a better way.

I also like the email list. After a 3-year hiatus I'm back riding again and
have been following the list. I started reading the newsgroup, but I
actually find it more convenient to read it in email form. I'm also not
finding it that much of a problem. Kmail, my email program, threads topics,
but I know other mailers let you sort by subject. That way I can scan
through the topics, read the ones I care about, and delete them all when I am
done.

The other nice thing you can do with a modern email program is filter
messages. If there are certain topics you are interested in you can filter
them into a folder that you read first. Not perfect, but normally close
enough. If you feel that someone's posts are annoying, you can filter their
messages straight to the trash. It takes a bit of effort, but I actually
think that email is a nice way to follow the discussion.

Beirne
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[rhysling]

Originally posted by John Foss
First, let me re-explain the problem, which I think many of the posters
don't understand.

Could this system be in place by tomorrow? Please?

-Christopher

[sendhair]

May I suggest adding a category entitled "Cranky" ?


... but I digress,

originally posted by John Foss:
Filters are only as good as I'd rather ... <SNIP> This would eliminate a lot of Marmite, but might also take
away Carol McLean's link to an interesting painting, for example.

Well, I guess it all boils down to a matter of (ahem) taste, then...

Only time will tell, but judging by the relative volume of posts re: "Marmite" (versus) "the Oily Easter Bunny on a Uni and a bunch of other cute pichers", you're out-numbered, for better or worse!

If you look back, quite a few of the longest-running threads go from a little to way off-topic. There was a thread once about the relative intelligence of Unicyclists... I think the "off-topic-itis" is a function of said intelligence. Small brains : one-track minds... that sort of thing. So, is a high volume of posts good or bad? Everytime I check the U.S.A. forum, I see this:

There have been no posts in the last 30 days in this forum.

originally posted by John Foss:
I use Outlook, which I have heard described as "a petri dish for viruses."

If Microsoft made Unicycles, the world would be one great Unicyclist less, I fear.

[sendhair]

Can someone please tell me why the Spelling Police are bad, but the Topic Police are good?

If someone said that they just couldn't stay on topic because of a congenital handicap, or because this form of communication is just so darned casual... ergo: it's perfectly all right and downright preferrable to go off-topic, would it be OK then?

In the meantime, we're having some fun over in "Just Conversation"... with or without you!

C'mon everybody!

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 03:33:22 -0500, jagur
<jagur.9tyda@timelimit.unicyclist.com> wrote:

>where's Klaas Bil when you need him?he could help with this crap.
I'm not sure that your assessment is true.
As to your question: I was on holiday. I have, on the first night back
home, downloaded all 1573 messages that appeared during those 14 days,
and I've already spent 5 nights reading through them, and responding
to some. You can tell my progress from what I respond to.

Oh, and I've also sometimes posted to "just conversation" (months
ago). Does that make me cool too?

Klaas Bil (now virtually living on 21 August)