Re: Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg51987] Re: [mg51968] Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings
- From: DrBob <drbob at bigfoot.com>
- Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 02:08:07 -0500 (EST)
- References: <200411050821.DAA08094@smc.vnet.net>
- Reply-to: drbob at bigfoot.com
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
I think the moderator does a great job already; don't mess with it. Bobby On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 03:21:05 -0500 (EST), Steven M. Christensen <steve at smc.vnet.net> wrote: > I want to take the opportunity to reply to Paul's suggestion in > as much detail as possible. > > I am sorry I was not at the event at the Wolfram Technology > Conference when this was discussed. > > First, here are the steps I take each day to moderate this group. > Figuring out where in these steps to put in categorization would need > to fit into this. > > 1. I get perhaps 2500-3000 emails a day, every day. Of these, perhaps > 500 are not spam. Because the Mathgroup addresses are easily found > by spammers, there is no way around getting a lot of spam. > Further, because MathGroup users often, unfortunately, > send html email or other attachments, maybe 10-20 of their mails get > filtered by my, fairly sophisticated but not perfect, spam filters into > my spam folder. > > 2. Of the 500 good emails that get past my spam filters, I then have to > filter out those mails that are for Mathgroup. Then, I have to > go through the spam folder to find any MathGroup posts that might be > there. So,there are usually about 70 emails relevant to MathGroup. > Some, maybe 10 do not follow the rules - flames, licensing questions, > discussions of other systems, really trivial items, totally non-Mathematica > related. In the end, there are 30-60 emails to read in more detail. > > 3. Once I decide that the posts are OK, I run them through a number of > UNIX scripts and do some more editing to take out unneeded mail headers > etc. > > 4. Then the mails are run through scripts that send them to the > newsgroup and the mailing list. One of the scripts adds the > [mg ... ] numbers to the Subject line of the mail that goes to > the mailing list. Note that the [ ] are really needed. Suppose > you just put Statistics in the Subject line, mail filters might > not always know how to do the filtering, whereas [Statistics] > is easier to filter. > > This process takes from 1-3 hours typically, depending on the > number of emails, their complexity, etc. > > So, the questions are, when during this process would categorisation > take place? What would it look like? Who would do it? How would > it effect mail and newsgroup readers? > > I think it would be a bad idea to put things like [Statistics] in > the Subject line. Would newsgroup and mail readers be able to > thread such Subject lines? It might be better to put it in something > like an X-Category mail header, but I am not sure that all readers > could handle this. Personally, I think they would just make the > Subject lines longer and harder to read. > > Who is going to do the categorisation? I know a lot about > Mathematica and mathematics, but certainly not enough to figure > out what every message best fits into. If I make a poor selection > and a message has gone out it is virtually impossible to re-do > the categorization in the newsgroups, mailing list, google group > listings, archives, etc. Search therefore becomes inaccurate > very quickly. What if someone disagrees with my selections? > How much time will this add to moderation? > > If others select the categories to help me out, that will just > delay moderation. Maybe, we can urge the person who originally > writes the message to select a category, but how does a new user > know what category to pick? What if a users forgets to include > a categorisation? > > Is someone going to go back and categorise the 51,000 messages that > are already in the archive? > > The simplest thing to do would be to have some group that is willing > categorise the posts once they get into the Wolfram Research > archive only. Then search could be done fairly easily. > > This sort of categorisation may be done in other newsgroups, but > I have not seen it. > > I am open to suggestions and comments, but I frankly this this > is going to be a very difficult process to do. > > Steve Christensen > > > Hi all, and especially Steve Christensen: > > At the recent Wolfram Technology Conference in Champaign, Luc Barthelet > <lucb at ea.com>, a regular user of MathGroup suggested that it would be > good if all postings to MathGroup included a categorisation in their > header, e.g. > > Newbies, Graphics, Functions, Programming, Statistics, Teaching, > Integration, Numerics, Symbolic Algebra, Special Functions, ... > > so a Subject line might take the form > > [Statistics]: How to fit to an elliptical function? > > (not sure if the [ ] are required or useful). In this way, sorting by > Subject would be easier. Of course, it's not always easy to do such a > categorisation, and they may change with time (as a problem stated as a > Numerics might end up being solved using Symbolic Algebra). > Nevertheless, I think such a change would be very useful. It should also > help when doing searches on MathGroup archives. > > Cheers, > Paul > -- DrBob at bigfoot.com www.eclecticdreams.net
- References:
- Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings
- From: "Steven M. Christensen" <steve@smc.vnet.net>
- Re: [MathGroup]: Descriptive headings