RE: How the Gloranthan Digest should work - Rick's perspective

From: Meints, Richard (R.J.) <"Meints,>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 14:05:48 -0400


All,

In short, if people truly followed the
"Rules of the Road", I think that the digest will work just fine. A few thoughts on how I see those rules:

  1. Don't quote huge chunks of the message you are responding to.
    Unfortunately, this falls on deaf ears far too much of the time. It's hard to get to the meat of people's posts when dozens of lines are quoted (often with poor format) and then there are just a few lines of reply. When this is coupled with just a simple "disagree" or "agree" with the original post, I find it a blatant waste of my and probably other's time.
  2. Appropriate Subject Line.
    All too often, there are too many people who just stick with the default reply their mail software generates and we are left with headings like "RE: Glorantha Digest 1142". This greatly slows down my ability to skim to what I want to read. I certainly never get anything out of a generic reference like that.
  3. Paraphrase.
    This greatly ties in with number one. People are so sensitive to being accused of missing someone else's point, or being counterattacked with "that's not what I said" that lengthy quoting results. This is a shame.
  4. No anonymous posting.
    No problems with this for quite some time.

THE GENERAL NATURE OF THIS GROUP:



I don't see the need to split hairs over whether this is a barroom chat or a hushed discussion in the library, as long as a few simple rules are followed:
  1. Be polite. (I confess I sometimes fail)
  2. Be understanding.
  3. Be kind.
  4. Relax, it's just a game.
  5. Encourage, not discourage others.
  6. Actively welcome other points of view.
  7. Ginna Jar

Individual emails vs. a Digest format:



It seems like email programs, if people
explored their options and settings,
would largely make this point moot.
I'm no whiz with MS Outlook, but I'm
sure it has a number of tools that would help me undigest the digest if I preferred that approach to reading it. I'm lazy, so I haven't bothered to figure out how to
set those settings or use those tools,
but I'm not going to try and change the digest to single emails because of that.

WHY DON"T NEWBIES RESPOND?



Most likely it's because there aren't
that many of them. Add on the learning
curve and I doubt many take the plunge.
A few might read the digest for quite some time and feel overwhelmed, and see the
occasional argument, but I don't think
a fear of being slammed drives many away. More than likely, it is for a wide variety of reasons, many of which would be
eliminated if people just followed the
simple maxim of "encouraging others"

IN THE END:



Between the HQ-Digest, HW-Rules, and this digest, I'm pretty well covered. In many respects I wish there were fewer groups, possibly only one. There was a time when the RQ Daily/Gloranthan Digest was enough for the vast majority of us before we let it get splintered as people felt they were
reading too much stuff they didn't care
about.

That's my take on all this.

Rick Meints
www.glorantha.info

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