<div>Nils et. al.</div>
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<div>My Gmail e-mail account already sorts and bundles e-mails into threads under consistent subject headings. For example, today when I opened my Gmail account, there were 36 Vision2020 posts indicated under the "property tax" thread that I could read if I opened that one line. So those 36 posts under that subject heading are reduced to only one line in my inbox load page, dramatically reducing the "clutter." This approach might help someone better utilize their time to focus on what subjects interest them.
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<div>Gmail also offers a huge over 2 Gig free storage that would take many years to fill even allowing all Vision2020 posts, never deleting. The e-mail account search function also allows finding a Vision2020 post, among thousands, a cinch! Much easier than plowing through the Vision2020 archives. This makes Gmail ideal, in some respects, to use exclusively as an e-mail account dedicated to Vision2020. Some people have security and privacy concerns regarding Gmail's system, run by Google, but for a public list serve, the content is public anyway.
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<div>One of the problems, however, with expecting subject headings to match post content, is the fact that often people post content on a differing subject than what the subject heading indicates. This does waste time when opening a post expecting it to contain content on subject X, only to find entirely different content that is of no interest. I find this particularly annoying.
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<div>There also can be valuable content missed when screening post content for personal interest only based on what the subject heading implies, given the aforementioned problem.</div>
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<div>As far as egregious posting content on Vision2020, as long as the list remains unmoderated, what can you do? Some abandon the list because of this problem. I often unsubscribe for a spell, thinking the list a waste of time due to the nature of the content, or that my contribution is of no consequence, or is annoying others. But here I am again.
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<div>But another way to view Vision2020 is that it gives the reader a taste of the real world of opinion and "dialog" in a democracy, a real world that is full of personal insults posing as rational discussion, cruelty posing as humor, blind allegiance to authority figures when the evidence is overwhelming they do not deserve it, and people who are afraid to really speak their minds in public, for whatever reason, hiding behind make believe identities as they post. And so forth... Thus a person reading Vision2020 might discover a less censored view of the realities of public opinion, outside of their circle.
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<div>That being said, I have found Vision2020 to offer discussion of some issues from so many different points of view, with numerous posts from well educated and informed list members, that the list offers a more thorough, diverse and fleshed out discussion than that found in any other local venue for public dialog, certainly exceeding what the local press offers. And the list has a healthy self correcting mechanism given that there are list members from diverse points of view who are quick to correct opinions or facts they think are in error. This self correcting mechanism can function very quickly with the speed of instant communication on the Internet.
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<div>Personally, I don't find it that difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff on Vision2020. And for those who want a nice tidy well behaved list serve that never provokes, insults or wanders... well, these individuals don't appear to understand the reality of public opinion and discussion in a democracy, and/or just don't want to invest the time in sorting the wheat from the chaff.
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<div>Which leads to my final point: isn't the fact that so many people, even among the well educated and financially successful, do not take the time to invest in public discussion and dialog, with all the warts and blemished and nastiness inevitably involved, one of the primary reasons that democracy in the US has such a low rate of vital participation, expressed clearly in the low rates of voter turnout?
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<div>Ted Moffett <br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/26/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Nils Peterson</b> <<a href="mailto:nils_peterson@wsu.edu">nils_peterson@wsu.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">The following is posted here<br><a href="http://www.nilspeterson.com/2006/07/26/thoughts-on-improving-the-community-e">
http://www.nilspeterson.com/2006/07/26/thoughts-on-improving-the-community-e</a><br>mail-list/<br><br>I could have arranged my blog to post to this list, and you could return to<br>my blog to post a reply. This is part of my exploration of the alternatives
<br>outlined in this post....<br><br><br>Moscow has an un-moderated, city-wide email list called Vision 2020, hosted<br>by First Step Internet (thank you for that.) The mission is: "Moscow Vision<br>2020 is an informal, multi-partisan group of Moscow residents formed in 1993
<br>to encourage more public information and debate about the future of Moscow<br>and Latah County."<br><br>On the list, I happened to catch Chasuk's departure note (he was a frequent<br>poster). A victim of flame war burnout. The waters closed over the corpse
<br>with hardly a ripple.<br><br>And where is the Liberal Moscow blog? A V2020 alternative, announced in<br>early June 2006. I looked in via the RSS and the last post is mid-June.<br>Another corpse un-mourned, a better medium (blog + RSS) but no critical mass
<br>on the site.<br><br>I have a research interest in these types of communities. What would enhance<br>the communication channel that V2020 can at times be? Chasuk spoke about<br>wanting a better signal to noise ratio. It seems to me that much of the
<br>noise comes in the feedback to original posts -- questioning of the poster's<br>premise, elaboration, or conflation, of the issues. Simple provocation. For<br>some, that rhetorical exchange is clearly the fun of the list. Baiting and
<br>pouncing. Word play.<br><br>The problem is, some would prefer that the 'exchange' were taken "outside,"<br>but then would it be fun, without a crowd to watch? For those who prefer an<br>information dissemination channel, or a non-personal rebuttal or elaboration
<br>on a news or opinion piece in the DNews, the banter on V2020 is distracting<br>at the least and more often off-putting.<br><br>For a long time, I have been reading the V2020 digests. This reduces the<br>clutter in my inbox. I scan the table of contents of each digest for a
<br>couple features. First, is the post original or a reply. Second, who is the<br>author. Third, what is the topic.<br><br>If the post is original, the author of good repute (to me) and the topic<br>plausibly interesting, I typically read it (However, scrolling from TOC to
<br>item in the digest is clumsy.). If the reply is from a short list of<br>authors, and the topic formerly interesting, I read. This choosing is hard<br>to automate with a bozo filter alone.<br><br>Email seems to be a good vehicle for transmitting the content, but list
<br>processor technology is clumsy for separating the good from the bad? How<br>might it look?<br><br>I posit that it would look like this:<br>*Original posts could be subscribed to, without any replies, and readers<br>could apply (or not) personal 'bozo filters' to the original posts.
<br>*The whole dialog, or the whole digest, could be subscribed to, as it is<br>now.<br>*Threads could be subscribed to on an individual basis. Making an original<br>post, or a reply, would automatically subscribe the author to the resulting
<br>thread.<br>*When reading a post, a reader would have the ability to one-click subscribe<br>to the thread and perhaps see a digest of all the preceding posts in the<br>thread.<br><br>---<br><br>Thoughts?<br><br>=====================================================
<br>List services made available by First Step Internet,<br>serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.<br> <a href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</a><br> mailto:<a href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">
Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>====================================================<br></blockquote></div><br>