[Maurice R. Kelly]

On Feb 19, Jeff McLean wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Yeah, I'm with you Bruce and Kate and others.  Even though some of these
> threads are pretty lame (to me) and very deletable, it doesn't take a great
> deal of work to go down the list of new mails, select every mail that has
> NMOC in front of it, and press the delete button once.

You made a fantastic point there, but unfortunately, I think it went
against you. An abundance of NMOC messages to me suggests that people need
to get back on topic. If there's so many off-topic mails there should
really be two options: -
1) Shift the topic of the list to make off-topic, on-topic.
2) Produce a secondary list - PowderPals - where people with a common
interest in Midnight Oil have more of a social mailing list.

> Then we don't have the problem of people that are "just too busy in this
> day and age" to worry about reading our mindless drivel.

It's not just about being too busy. Or not having the patience to delete
the messages. I signed up to a Midnight Oil mailing list to get
information on the band, and discussion about the band. I now pay for the
bandwidth and space that my mail takes up - I don't like it being wasted
with off-topic material.

The great thing about the internet is that we don't have to squeeze
everything into one place. There is an abundance of places where people
can set up mailing lists, and so it is perfectly feasible to keep this
place on-topic (the majority of the time.)

-- 
Maurice R. Kelly
mkelly@deadheart.org.uk