Is it just me or is this problem due to the fact that the web-based chats
(that I've seen that are any good) are all on pay sites?
> Mailing lists have always seemed more serious and civil. People connect
> with them over longer time intervals, and there seems to be more of a
> sense of membership and social obligation.
[...]
> An induction/orientation telephone chat with a veteran participant would
> be an amazing tool to create a civil tone in a group with a lot of
> turnover. The key is to minimize the degree of hierarchy introduced to
> achieve this. That is why I am hot on "spreading servers" -- spreading
> the welcome-call action items like lawn seed over the large pool of
> people who, say, had posted both since some recent threshold and before
> some earlier one.
Even simpler is to have list subscription only be allowed when a proposed
new member is sponsored by one (or two or...) existing members in good
standing.
This could be done similar to the PGP web-of-trust idea of levels of
trust. I.e., for people that I know very well, I would be willing (for
some of them :-) to give them unconditional sponsorship to a list while for
people that I might only know via the 'net, I would give just a passing
acknowledgement that they aren't complete buttheads. So, a person might
need to collect a few conditional sponsorships or just one unconditional
sponsorship.
Oh well, just my ramblings.
Take care,
John