Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Mon, 20 Oct 1997 05:46:46 +0100
Bodvar Skutvik wrote:
>
> Maggie wrote
>
> > Diana,
> > Thank you, thank you.
Hey it's my pleasure! But I couldn't do much without the participation
of others. Bodvar and Doug have been very helpful in providing
information for the website so thanks to them and to everyone else for
subscribing too.
> The FAQ issue was not brought to a
> conclusion. A few members suggest me for the task, but i feel that I
> am too "monomaniac" and only have my narrow field of interest. Also,
> it is the formulations of the questions that I see as the tough part.
> I seem to remeber that Lars Marius Garshol volounteered, and that is
> perfectly all right with me, he may distribute questions among the
> members he thinks will be able to answer, and I am willing to be
> consulted any time. Besides a FAQ is supposed to be published on the
> "Forum" and requires a certain make-up technically, doesn't it?
At the moment the job of FAQ-keeper is open to anyone that wants it. As
we seem unable to agree on even the simplest matters I'm starting to
despair that we'll ever be able to agree on a FAQ. The technical side of
writing an html FAQ and posting it is very simple. I'd be happy to show
anyone how to do it if they don't know how.
> Another thing. Diana hinted at a change of the setup of the LS
> mailing-list itself. Again, I would have wished for an open forum,
> but perhaps such ones have their drawbacks?
Having an open forum such as a newsgroup or a bulletin board is a
possiblity but I don't think it's a good idea at this stage.
For one thing it means that you'd have to be online whenever you read
the messages. This makes it expensive and inconvenient for people with
dial up connections.
My experience of newsgroups is that they work best when people with
similar interests exchange factual information - usually in short direct
messages. It has become the norm on the LS to write lengthy intricate
discourses. I'm afraid that much of the subtlety of our arguments will
be lost in a newsgroup.
Another problem is that if anyone at all can post messages we will
certainly attract people who scorn Pirsig and his work. I feel that the
MoQ is still at an immature stage and if we are having to deal with
people who are out to destroy it then it might not survive.
Then there's the problem of politeness. Many times I've found an
interesting newsgroup and opened an interesting thread only to find that
the discussion has descended into a shouting and swearing match. It
really doesn't achieve anything.
I appreciate that having dozens of messages clogging up your mailbox is
annoying though. If anyone has any better suggestions please let them be
known.
Hettinger wrote:
> One of Netscape's other capabilities is the ability to send in "html"
> format, which allows formatting (bold, italic, indenting, etc) and
> graphics. It seems to me that using more advanced formatting might make
> communication clearer, and that could only be good.
If you don't mind I'd prefer if people didn't use html. It takes far
longer for the listserver to process html and some people have had
trouble reading it. As some of the LS read their mail through work or
university accounts they may not be able to choose which programs they
use, so I think we should stick to the most widely compatible formats.
Diana
-- post message - mailto:skwok@spark.net.hk unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
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