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Pastimes : SI Message Filtering - Pros and Cons -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CatLady who wrote (201)	5/16/1998 4:10:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 263

Cat Lady, I got involved a few weeks ago in a discussion on the go2net-acquisition-of-SI thread about why lurkers don't post. The volume of posts is part of both issues. I, for one, am positively overwhelmed some days by the number of posts. I recently took a small initial position in LGND so I'm following that especially prolific one. Each day I see the number of new (alleged) LGND posts and I just groan. I own 20 different stocks and follow about 20 more at any given time. By the time I've read, or even scanned, through all the threads, I don't have much energy left to go out and do research to bring back to the thread or to answer messages. I think SI could actually be better if it weren't so busy and labor intensive because more people would have more "found" time to gather info from other sources for the benefit of the thread. As to whether a filter would help the thread length problem, I'm not so sure. It would be counter-productive to automatically filter out any individuals who are sometimes contributors because there's no way to know for sure in advance if any particular post is on topic and important or whether it just discusses golf or Monica. You need to look at each message to make that determination. The only situation in which I can see a filter working is where there are real troublemakers and even then it's doubtful. The WCII thread is a case in point. That one got really ugly at times. I'd invite you to read through it but the worst of it has been deleted by mgmt. The volume there was not just the instigator's posts but the thread regulars who couldn't resist the bait, even though they seemed to be trying. Even if there were a filter, unless every single one of the regulars filtered out the troublemaker, there's a risk that someone would see the bait and respond, others would read the response thinking it was on topic, they would react--and off we go... I agree with John about the problem, and filtering seems on the surface to be a good solution. But but I'm not sure it holds up to scrutiny and does carry some risk of damaging some of the good qualities of SI as you say. A small aside: I'll tell you one way I ease this problem. About half way through the threads I hop on over to the cat-chat thread. It's such an oasis; really improves my disposition. Thanks for starting it. Another approach that might help would to show more than one line of the message in the index as is done in the clubhouses. That might easily and harmlessly speed up the processing of unwanted posts. Karen