Mark
Louis Proyect wrote:
> Doug is much too genial to make this point, but since I am constitutionally
> uncongenial, I will make it for him. LBO-talk and Marxism mailing lists are
> housed at Panix, which charges you for bytes transmitted. LBO-talk has a
> much higher volume than Marxism, because it is not as narrowly focused and
> because Doug is a charismatic figure who naturally draws a crowd.
>
> But the cost is considerable on a high-volume list. He must be dismayed by
> the quantity of posts which simply repeat the entire preceding post with a
> one or two line comment to the effect of "I agree with this." This is a bad
> habit and costly to Doug. This practice is tied to the promiscuous nature
> of electronic communications. When one depresses the "reply" key, the
> entire previous post appears all ready for your commentary. Since so many
> people are anxious to get their thoughts out without pause, the tendency is
> to simply carry all the old baggage forward. More bytes = more costs for
> Doug. It also equals a lot of superfluous verbiage.
>
> I used to be on a moderated mailing-list called "The Sixties." It banned
> flames, but it also banned one-liners. As a rule of thumb, the moderator
> said that it should only be necessary to quote a few sentences from a
> previous post just to remind people what the thread is about. This takes a
> bit more editorial reflection, but it makes for a more cogent reply.
>
> One of the bad things about the Internet is that it fosters a sort of
> hypercommunication that, while more democratic than the world of print
> journals and magazines, falls short sometimes of the sort of deeper
> reflection that is needed.
>
> That's my two cents.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)