[Beowulf] Apologies for the spam/virus yesterday

[Jim Lux]

At 01:36 PM 2/9/2006, Andrew Piskorski wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 11:54:31AM -0800, Donald Becker wrote:
>
> > And except for a few weeks scattered over the history of the list,
> > I've been the sole or primary moderator.
>
>Uh, sole moderator?  Why is that?  Surely there are dozens of
>long-time posters on the list who might be happy to spend a few
>minutes each day weeding through the email.  What is stopping you from
>farming out human moderation to a much larger number of people?

Are you suggesting, gasp, parallel processing on a cluster of biological 
processors<grin>?


>  And
>what software do you use for managing the list?

More to the point, what software or process will be used for spreading the 
workload?  It has to be delay tolerant, error correcting, self 
authenticating, and probably something else too.



> > The bottom line is that we are considering a message board format to
> > replace the mailing list.  It would have required logins to
> > post, and retroactive moderation to delete advertising and trolls.
> > Any opinions?

I find email discussion lists MUCH better than message boards. Probably 
because it's push rather than pull, and because of the hard work from 
moderators, on those lists with good moderation. I am on some other lists 
which are less moderated, and while there is a certain novelty to the 
multitude of offers for pharmaceuticals, advanced degrees, and so forth, 
not to mention unique investment opportunities in west Africa, the 
excitement quickly fades.



James Lux, P.E.
Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875