scotartt on Wed, 12 Dec 2001 15:33:32 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> Nettime-Bold and You


Funnily enough, I've been keeping a database that holds all the messages
sent to -bold AND to -l over the past month. This is is part of a
forthcoming "roll your own moderation" version of nettime that I've been
developing, which will be called "autonomous nettime". It allows any
person who wants, to maintain their own sub-lists of nettime content
according to whatever criteria they so desire, other people can then view
these sub-lists online, (later get them via email). A few people, for
example, have asked if it is possible to get a version of nettime that has
_just_ the announcers, which is currently impossible. However if someone
wants to maintain such a beast on autonomous nettime, then it will be
possible to do so. Similarly people will be able to compile sub-nettimes
that have just whatever content tickles their fancy, all generated from
the original and combined -bold and -l content. An appropriate
announcement will be made when this beast is ready for people to try out
(soon).

Anyway I went through the database and came up with the following
statistics comparing -l and -bold messages, and here are the stats; this
is over a 14 day period ending approx 16:36 2001-12-11 AEST (about this
time yesterday).

         sent to -l and -bold: 47
   compiled from multiple 
   -bold posts and sent to -l: 2 *
                   announcers: 5 *
              roving reporter: 4
ones found on -l not on -bold: 8

* this is the number of messages found on -l, not the original number of
messages on -bold that those are derived from.

Of course, the announcer content will mostly come from -bold anyway.
"Roving reporter" doesn't seem to go to -bold at all. Of the 8 messages
left that were found on -l but not on -bold, there was no consistent
person or address, except one was Wolfgang and another the "thing
auction"; every single one of those 8 messages would been sent directly to
the nettime admin account, whcih makes it impossible for us to cc it to
-bold: the whole point of -bold is that it possesses "zero extra moderator
work factor"; after all, no one actually pays anyone, or gathers any other
tangible benefit, from moderating nettime-l.

So that's 12 out of 66 messages that didn't go to -bold or 18% (ignoring
the fact of course the announcer's 5 messages is conservatively 20 or more
on -bold, and ignoring the total number of -bold messages that may be
collapsed into those 7 messages, which would make that figure look even
better). Therefore more than 4 out of 5 messages sent to -l are also found
on -bold.

Hardly "sabotage" I think. We can't help it if the flood of spam and other
"stupidification" (great word) in -bold is getting worse every week;
that's why -l is moderated.

regs
scot,

> From: "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>
> To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net, jesis@xs4all.nl
> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 20:47:21 -0500
> Subject: [Nettime-bold] Re: Bolders
> 
> J,
> 
>    I wouldn't worry about it too much, people
> tend to browse bold via the web site archive
> when there's clearly something going on in
> the digest; otherwise people who are
> terminally engaged in some ongoing project
> tend to consume pretty much all there is in
> Nettime bold. Its a good source for news on 
> new projects too. But only to be dipped into 
> occasionally otherwise you become a
> Nettime Bolder Space Cadet First Class, with
> Distinction.
> 
>    I think the moderators do a good job considering the sheer volume of Nettime 
> stuff. They don't catch everything but
> do present representitive posts and try
> to stop the thing getting in a rut. The
> only non-bold posts they do are when they
> wheel out ancient hacks like my good friend
> Sean 'the Baptist' Cubitt to tell us about 
> the good bread he bakes and how 'net.art' 
> is destined to redefine the globe as we know
>  it.
> 
>    I also happen to know that it was (not 
> sure if it still is now that the heat has
> gone out of the techbubble) perused avidly 
> by commercial and governmental monitors anxious to be au fait with the terms of the 'digital revolution'.
> 
>    For this reason I doubt any Nettimers 
> will be rounded up in this Coup, even if 
> they do write odes to bin Laden. 
> 
> Collectively, including all those 
> heavyweight lurkers, they are Far Too 
> Powerful to mess with. They have startling
> insight. They hold Opinion on matters the
> rest of the media and communications world
> has not yet considered.
> 
> 
> 
> Lachlan Brown
> 
> 
> 
> bolders,
> 
> 
> As you might have noticed nettime-bold is not taken seriously at all by
> the nettime moderators. If you look at the list archives you will see
> that many if not most of the mails on nettime have never ever been on
> bold. Nettime-bold, which was supposed to be the unmoderated version of
> nettime, is simply used as nettime's trashcan. Of course the moderators
> never really wanted an unmoderated version of nettime, and it took more
> then two years of complaining about the way moderation was handled and
> applied before bold was finally created at all. The situation at present
> reeks of sabotage to me. My question to you is: do you think it makes
> any sense to keep nettime bold if it shows hardly anything of nettime?
> There are plenty of other unmoderated lists. Should we protest against
> this ungoing stupidification of bold?

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