Gating the APD

To: aquatic-plants at actwin_com
Subject: Gating the APD
From: Shaji Bhaskar <shaji at nando_net>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 20:56:07 -0500 (EST)
Forwarded. 

-Shaji
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Shaji Bhaskar, Durham, North Carolina                   shaji at nando_net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "David W. Webb" <dwebb at ti_com>
Subject: Gating the APD
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:13:10 -0800
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Reply-To: "David W. Webb" <dwebb at ti_com>

I've given up on the two-way gate idea since it's unpopular, but I have another
idea for a one-way gate that I think might help the newsgroup without hurting
the mailing list.

* Enroll rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants to the Aquatic Plants Digest 
  mailing list using an email->newsgroup re-director.  

This will make APD postings very recognizeable on the newsgroup as
mailing-list entries.  My complaints about the killies mailing list ->
alt.aquaria.killies gate are that you can't easily tell that the
postings came from a mailing list, and that on-newsgroup responses to
mailing list-originated postings often don't get read by mailing list
members.  Newsgroup newcomers often don't know about the mailing list
and can't tell that the vast majority of the traffic comes from the
mailing list.  Since there's no way to tell, the newsgroup readers may
get frustrated and quit before they find out why their posts haven't
been responded to.

This will also place the depth of technical detail from the APD on the
newsgroup where "potential plant enthusiasts" can easily get to the information
without having to read every plant-related post to find a mention of the APD
somewhere.

This may allow people who have a mild interest to "lurk" from the newsgroup,
without having to join the APD unless they desire to.  I think it may also help
generate additional traffic on the newsgroup (although there is a possibility
that this could backfire and kill the newsgroup as well).

If this suggestion were implemented, I would stay subscribed to the APD because
I like to post here occasionally.  Others may stay subscribed for this reason
or for other reasons, or they might choose to just read the digests on the
newsgroup.

If the APD were gated to the newsgroup one message at a time (instead of in
digest format), I'd like to see some kind of subject prefix like "APD: " added
to indicate that the message is not original to the newsgroup.

I guess it's pretty obvious, but I have a goal of building up the newsgroup.  I
don't want this goal to interfere with the success of the APD (as success is
defined by the APD readership consensus).

David W. Webb
Enterprise Computing Provisioning
Texas Instruments Inc. Dallas, TX USA
(214) 575-3443 (voice)  MSGID:       DAWB
(214) 575-4853 (fax)    Internet:    dwebb at ti_com
(214) 581-2380 (pager)  Text Pager:  pgr at ti_com Subj:PAGE:David Webb