[10161] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Cost, Noise, and com-priv
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Johnsson)
Wed Feb 9 22:36:21 1994
From: johnsson@hamilton.com (Richard Johnsson)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Cc: com-priv-request@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 09 Feb 94 11:31:13 -0600.
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 94 19:35:37 PST
tjs@msc.edu (Tim Salo) wrote
> In response to a recent submission to com-priv, I received a number of
> automated "bounced mail" responses, including one 49 kB message.
>
> Apparently, some who have submitted mail to com-priv recently consider
> these "bounced mail" messages to have a non-zero "cost" to the submitter.
>
> At the same time, some of the postings to com-priv give the impression,
> presumably mistaken, that writer had less information content than
> many readers hope or expect, (i.e., the signal-to-noise ratio problem).
>
> I applaud PSI's recent social experiment of assigning a non-zero
> "cost" to submissions to com-priv. It will be interesting to see
> how this "cost" will change the character of com-priv. Will those
> with real information content post in spite of the "cost?" Will
> those with less-than-average information content post in spite
> of the "cost?"
>
> I hope PSI will publish their research results. (Perhaps someone can
> even get a Masters thesis out of this...)
>
> -tjs
The major change may well be an increase in messages such as yours (and
mine :-) discussing the meta-issue of mailing list maintainance and
netiquette.
Unless there is evidence to the contrary, I refuse to believe that
PSI has deliberately made this change. They have always seemed like
reasonable and responsible 'net citizens. More likely it is a side effect
of some other change at PSI. How many of us have never been bitten by a
side effect?
The only "person" who can address the problem of bounced messages is the
one who controls the list membership, namely com-priv-request. That's why
'net practice and common sense says that errors encountered while
distributing mail to a list should go to the list owner and not to the
sender. Telling the sender doesn't do anyone any good because s/he can't do
anything about it.
Let's see if com-priv-request will straighten this out. If not, then flame
that address rather than the list.
Richard
