[648] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
mit/housing-talk survey results
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Sun May 13 05:24:13 2001
Message-Id: <200105130924.FAA25129@Press-Your-Luck.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@MIT.EDU, housing-talk@MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 05:24:08 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
Tallying up the survey results was ookie. At least there were no
pregnant chads.
-B.
---
1.) Do/would you subscribe to mit-talk to get news about MIT?
Yes: 26
No: 3
1b.) Separate mailing list for MIT news only (e.g. mit-news)?
Yes!: 1
Yes: 16
Yes, and please ACL it: 4
No: 6
No, other news sources are better: 1
No, integrate with discussion: 1
1c.) separate mailing list for non-MIT-specific news?
Yes!: 1
Yes: 12
Maybe: 2
Yes, but I wouldn't sub: 4
No: 3
No, use other forums: 4
No, already exist: 1
2.) Do/would you subscribe to mit-talk to get event announcements?
Yes: 8
No: 2
No!: 2
Sorta: 4
2b.) separate mailing list for event announcements?
No, but I like events e-mail: 1
I don't like events e-mail: 3
Yes: 13
Yes, but interest-specific only: 3
Yes, but I wouldn't sub: 2
Dunno: 3
No: 2
Combine news and mit-wide events: 2
3.) subscribe to mit-talk to listen to chatter and debate?
Yes if on topic: 11
Yes: 15
No: 2
3b.) Current discussion
Hate: 6
Hate Objectivist/Christian/Conservative/Liberal rants: 5
Hate personal attacks/mindless flaming: 9
Love: 5
Torn: 3
3c.) Open mit-talk + limited mit-policy-talk?
Yes: 3
No, it wouldn't work/too much splitting: 6
Make Separate, don't care how: 3
Huh?: 2
Keep mit-talk, punt to spa-discuss, etc.: 3
No: 3
No, but make a "meta" list like mit-talk-discuss: 3
4.) Should we merge housing-talk into mit-talk?
Yes: 9
Sure: 2
No: 5
Noncommittal but verbose: 6
5.) Do you have any other ideas or comments?
There were several comments that political rants don't belong on
mit-talk, and no one disagreed.
Some people said they'd be willing to talk about non-MIT
college-related events. But a majority didn't want to hear about
these things, especially about recent events at Harvard.
Other random comments that weren't more or less just explaining a
yes/no answer are included below.
Ideas:
- It might be a good idea to advertise the discuss meetings, and
their web archives, so that individuals who don't want to get large
amounts of email in their inbox but still would like to follow the
discussions, can do so.
- Use events@mit.edu; integrate it with events.mit.edu. Publicize it
well.
- Direct political rants to politics@mit.edu, spa-discuss@mit.edu, or
uninformed-political-rants@mit.edu.
- Make mit-talk for discussion of mit-news.
- Encourage use of personals or mit-yo-mama for personal attacks.
On announcements:
- I think that there should be a known list for announcements from
the news office, from cmvest and other people. Something along
these lines may already exist. I would like to see it be free of
announcements about events student groups (possibly excepting the
UA). This would be a purely announcement list, not discussion.
- Separate out an announcements list. Encourage admins to use it.
Discourage students from using it. (Perhaps there are cases where
it would be valid for them to use it, but let it be the exception.)
On events:
- How about sending out a digest of event postings every (few)
day(s).
- This particular old dog has never managed to learn the new trick of
events.mit.edu. I think it's easier to announce an receive
announcements over email. Everyone does this already, so it fits
into their schedule.
- Course if events were available to allow you to enter your
preferences and then email you notifications/digests customized to
your interests that would likely be _much_more effective (and
relieve unwanted emails)
On list administration:
- Not really, except that there should be no censorship. I only
mention that because of someone (can't rember who) saying that they
would see that so and so was banned from MIT-Talk. Thats bs and we
all know it, but I wanted it to be on the record.
- Light-handed moderation, or simply a more
serious debate culture on the list, might be required.
- Having clearer rules on what's appropriate would be good. Rules
should incourage politeness and keeping to topics about MIT or
college, education and important local events in general. Kicking
off the few really bad offenders (if any are so deemed) would be
ok.
- It'd be nice if talk-request was a bit more activist with respect
to people doing stupid things on-list. The reuse maintainers are
somewhat more visibly activist in this way; it seems clear that
people who post items for sale to reuse almost automatically get
mail from Garry or Pocky rebuking them. This idea might work
better if there were published rules for mit-talk the way there are
for reuse. (My rules would include "no event announcements, unless
they're intended for discussion" and "discussion should be directly
related to MIT".)
- If there's volunteers, try moderation. I wonder if a lot more
people would be willing to sub to a discussion list with a
guaranteed minimum S/N ratio.
- Thanks for conducting this survey!
- You guys are doing great.
- BTW, thanks you guys for volunteering doing this job.
On the recent discussion:
- Some people on mit-talk sure are stupid.
- People are generally acting like asses, and I'm about three seconds
from unsubscribing.
- I think it's pretty good that you have all this conversation going
on. The only thing I worry about is the emotional and personal
flames. Try to control the vitriol and keep the discussion civil.
- I don't mind the traffic, I just wish people would think more
carefully, and edit their letters before they send them.
- I find the discussions to be interesting generally, but the
signal-to-noise ratio is a little low due to bad grammar, profanity
and ad hominem remarks.
Funny:
- I'm a multiple choice test taker. Deciding between yes/no is
already hard enou gh :o).
- Give meeee the brain.
- No [can't volunteer] ...unless I will be able to keep my MIT
account, then by all means yes. [Ed.: I would if I could. 8)]
- Perhaps one of you list admins could "accidentally" introduce a
perl script that "randomly" happens to lose e-mails before they
propagate to mit-talk. Not really, but it's an amusing thought,
and it just lowered my blood pressure by a few points. [Ed.: I know
*exactly* how you feel.]
