A new year(almost), a new idea

[Brett Dikeman]

Now, a few people on the staff list thought this wouldn't work, but I
thought I'd make the -suggestion- and see what people think.  If you don't
have something nice to say, don't say it(this doesn't mean I'm asking you
to censor your opinion, it just means that more good ideas have been
killed off by one pessimistic opinion than I can count, and I'm looking
for constructive, well thought out comments; if you're going to just post,
"this is stupid, it will never work", save yourself the time and effort
and find something more constructive, not destructive, to do with your
time.)

This is a simple concept and works on other mailing lists quite nicely; it
does so on any mailing list where traffic is a problem(50% of the list, in
a survey months ago, said traffic was too high), people are busy, and care
about the list's well-being as a group resource.  It can be summarized as
follows:

You post a question, and get answers(in private.)  The original
question-asker looks over the replies, figures out the solution or
consensus and summarizes things in a post, same subject line, save
"-resolution" at the end(or for filtering, "[resolution]".)  If you were
in the middle of a procedure(such as a t-belt job), you can, when you're
done, you've got even more to add in; you know what worked and what might
not have, etc.

The various replies should be noted briefly, and authors given credit
where credit is due.

  Too often, someone asks a question, people send replies, and the list
never hears the final story.  The next time the question is asked, if the
person who had the correct answer doesn't see it(most of us can't read
every email, or check all the new message subjects every few hours), the
question goes unanswered.  Summary posts help educate the entire list,
which translates into more knowledge in the general Audi community, and
this has more benefits than I can think of.  Summary posts are also much
easier to integrate into a FAQ or conclusive reference site(and hence, if
you've always wanted to contribute towards something like this, it's a
great way to start.)

Many people wish they could contribute more to the list, and this is a
great way to do so.  How/why?  Simple.  In return for your problem being
solved and for others spending time to answer your question, you spend
some of -your- time to clean up the collection of answers and provide a
content-rich post back to the list that people can filter off to a
separate mailbox, etc.  This also might make it easier to find answers to
problems when searching the archives, and it allows a lister to read a
single post and get in one big dose the collective wisdom of the
list.  Grandstanding and public flaming might also take a back seat, since
the person summarizing answers will probably not pass on the nastiness to
the list since it's not their ego :-)

A number of people tend to informally do this, and that's fine; I'd
encourage this kind of behavior on any level.

To demonstrate...rather than flood the list debating this, I'll ask people
to send me comments directly(please); provided Boston Edison doesn't screw
up like they do any time there's decent snow(laptop works on battery,
cablemodem doesn't :-), I'll get around to looking over all the opinions,
summarizing, and posting back what people said.

Cheers all,

Brett