Re: Qlist to the next level (FAQs)

[Andrei Talalaevskii <andrei@insti.physics.sunysb.edu>]

> 
> The medium exists...
>

And a great one! We all have praised the q-list, its content, its 
members and its listmeister many times and for good reasons. 
 
I've visited the a4.org about a month ago. Although there is certainly a
positive minded majority there too, the a4.org is contaminated by much
noise, bs and rude discussions often unrelated to cars. I remember a 
brutal pro-Mac vs pro-PC fight there fueled by undermature loudmouths.
By funny coincidence the discussion on exactly this topic came to q-list
in about a week. The topic certainly stands next to t*rsen by potential
excitement of zealous windows or mac gurus but it was not even close to the
amount of garbage and brutality it brought to a4. Finally, persuaded by other
listers, our gurus took this off the list. It didn't happen there. The end
of the story was the a4.org listmeister removing himself all this junk.
 
a4 is fancy but this may be an indirect cause of much more spam, or 
screaming there more appropriate for a local edition of a town cryer. The 
field that invites to follow the thread that appears after each message 
you read in a4 seems too tempting to resist.

And now the suggestion to this list. Amount of spam may be reduced by 
limiting the ability to post. Of course the restriction should be 
reasonable. I would suggest the following scheme.

1. if you s*bscr*be you can post.
2. anyone who is not s*bscr*bed but wants to post (many follow the list 
simply by reading the archive for the day) gets a password that matches 
his name or email address. Writing this individual password in the  
first line of email to quattro@coimbra... or in a separate field, if Dan 
wants to make a fancier frames input on the new site, results in the 
message reaching the whole list. Otherwise, it bounces with an explanation. 
Obtaining such a password should be an easy one-step procedure but I am 
sure it will be effective against "get rich quickly" posts.

Andrei