Re: A moderated everything-list substitute (was: Re: Provably exponential time algorithms)

From: Saibal Mitra <smitra.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 00:27:25 +0100

Rullell wrote:

> Another problem with moderation is how to decide the criteria for
> moderation. The FOR list (which is a moderated list covering a similar
> range of topics) has a mandate to be accessible to the layperson,
> which is interpreted by the moderator as "No mathematics allowed".

I agree. Do you remember when we had that discussion about Poincaré
recurrences on the FoR list?

>
> The trouble is that is a little difficult to discuss these topics in a
> meaningful way without mathematics.
>
> On the other hand, a "Best of" selection might be kind of handy. I'm
> having trouble digesting the current output of the everything list,
> even after automatically deleting entries with the words
> "consciousness" and "free will" in the subjects :).

Yes, but one may lose interesting topics...

I think that another reason why people who are very busy don't post (often)
simply because the large volume sets a sort of standard that you have to
reply in a few hours. Maybe it is better if some of use (like me recently)
reply to older interesting postings, regardless of the number of replies
that posting had since had.

Saibal

>
> Cheers
>
> Wei Dai wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 11:48:08PM +0100, Saibal Mitra wrote:
> > > Actually, one doesn't have to dig very deep in the archive. This very
thread
> > > is an example of an off topic irrelevant discussion. Irrelevant,
because
> > > there are so few other postings that should not have appeared on this
list.
> >
> > Perhaps instead of creating a seperate moderated list, someone can offer
> > the service of selecting high quality posts from this list and reposting
> > it - a "best of everything" list. This may serve people who find this
list
> > too high volume. The authors of the papers cited in the original
> > invitation, Bostrom, Schmidhuber, and Tegmark, all subscribe to the list
> > but probably no longer follow it closely because of the volume.
> >
>
>
>
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Received on Sun Jan 05 2003 - 18:29:38 PST

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