Re: Hot Topics

Pretty sad day when you have to apologise for being a human on an open list to which you've contributed heavily for many many years. apology not accepted from me Dan, you've nothing to apologise for, and anybody who doesn't like to read a bit of banter between people on a list can just avert their eyes - it was hardly 4chan grade trolling! Best & happy new year to you, Nathan Daniel Brown wrote:

    First, I have to admit that what I did was wrong.  I had assumed

(ASS-umed) that the other party in a discussion under a different thread would understand and appreciate the irony of my email in reply to his inappropriate message. Those of you who were barraged with the fallout know what I mean. Unfortunately, it was not well-received by the other person, which led to even further flaming and trolling. While I had tried both on- and off-list to urge the other party to move the discussion from the public forum to a private, one-on-one conversation, it was ignored and actually seemed to exacerbate the situation. For my part in that, I just wanted to send my general apologies to those bombarded with an unnecessary and somewhat illogical series of emails. If being married has taught me anything, it's that it's better to just apologize and move on, regardless of who's right or wrong. And if being married has taught me anything else, it's that, at least in this house, I'm always wrong. So.... sorry for the unnecessary banter.

    Moving on, those of you who have been on the list for several

years may recall when I was running the ListWatch and PostTrack system, which would send a weekly summary of the list's activities at the time. Before stopping it (it was on a server that burned out, and I just never put it back online), I had added a topic tracker as well, which would give the percentage of activity for a given topic, as well as the ratio of its discussion versus all messages to the list. Several people have asked if/when it would be coming back online, so I'm contemplating bringing it back beginning with the first week of January (next week). Does anyone have any thoughts on that, or any ideas for other interesting metrics they'd like to see? I'm particularly interested in the opinions of folks who recall the old system, but any opinions and ideas are more than welcome.

    If you'd rather send it to me directly instead of on the list, feel free.

    Happy early New Year, all.