X-Message-Number: 3511
From:  (David Stodolsky)
Subject:  CRYONICS: re: Administrivia: Re: CryoNet Options
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 94 12:28:22 +0100 (CET)


In Regards to your letter <>:
> Thanks for your message.  While I disagree with your conclusion (that
> my proposal was for an impoverishment of service) I won't waste space
> defending my original proposal here because your message prompted me
> to think of an even better (!) proposal.

OK, looks like I was writing in my sleep, but it had a good effect,
so I'll try again :-).


> 
> To recap, I suggested creating up to three mailing lists:
>     Filtered Digest (default)  - cryonet
>     Unfiltered Digest          - cryonet-xxx   <- need a better name

xxx = Comprehensive

>     Unfiltered and Undigested  - cryonet-yyy   <- need a better name

yyy = Editorial

Light refereeing could be built in to this set up. People getting
the cryonet-Editorial distribution could reply to messages with,
for example, the following evaluation keywords (in the subject line?):

:OFF (topic)
:RELEVANT (must read)
:RANT (author advised to withdraw article before digest is assembled)

These "editorial" messages could be processed according to some simple
rules like 2/3 of messages saying "off" automatically sends message to
cryonet-Comprehensive. Most "relevant" evaluations puts message at
the head of digest. "Rant" evaluations trigger a message to author
advising withdrawal (and rewrite, or just "kill".)

As a reader of cryonet, you would then get the best stuff at the
beginning of the digest, so you could continue reading until you couldn't
stand it anymore:-), and be reasonable confident there was little good
stuff further down. As a referee you would be demonstrating that
you could distinguish between stuff worth reading and rants, etc.
Selective weights could be given to referees' judgements as their
capabilities to categorize messages became clear. Lots more about
this in my paper on Consensus Journals, but this plan is enough to
run the top journals in the field off the road :-), assuming we attract
top authors.

All evaluation messages could go into cryonet-Comprehensive, so the
individualists among us could sort the messages on their own machines
according to their own judgement system, for instance, their own ratings 
could be compared to other's in order to "teach" their own machine what 
they wanted to read first. 


> One more detail.  The From: or Reply-To: field in the email header sent
> by the posting software probably should be the same for all three mailing
> lists and should _not_ be one of the three posting addresses.  This means
> that using a simple "reply" command in your mailer will not be sufficient
> to post a message.  You will have to choose explicitly where you want to
> post your message.

The risk here is that subject threads are broken, making it difficult
to pull together a line of discussion. It might be better to use a
single posting address with clues, as currently.

dss


David S. Stodolsky, PhD               Internet: 
Tornskadestien 2, st. th.       (C)         Tel.: + 45 38 33 03 30
DK-2400 Copenhagen NV, Denmark               Fax: + 45 38 33 88 80

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