I would normally send this in private, but since you have continued
to discuss it in public, I thought it would be good to tell you and
the group the viewpoint of one lurker regarding your "dumping" of large
numbers of posts AND the content of the large majority of them.
Receiving 10-20 posts at a time, all responding to matters that
had been last discussed 2-3 weeks ago, was indeed a nuisance. I am
glad that you are changing your strategy. But the problem for me,
as a lurker on the reflector, was that most of your posts consisted
of the verbatim comments of the person you were responding to plus
long quotations from other sources. One such post from time to time
is perhaps not a big deal. But wading through 10-20, where each post
required roughly 5-10 screens of paging, became simply too much for me.
As has already been mentioned by others, I think your contribution to the
discussion would be GREATLY enhanced by adopting a different strategy
of writing. Rather than depending on long quotes from other sources,
state your case concisely and in your own words. At least summarize in your
own words the main thrust of your message and put it at the top of the post.
This would give you a more positive tone and would give you the chance to
restate and clarify your main points for the benefit of all of us who read
them. Of course there are times when a long quotation is appropriate. But
page after page of them is wearying to the reader and is just another form of
"argument by appeal to authority" which many people find unproductive.
My response to Brian's poll was that I thought your practice indeed was
an abuse of the system, but I was concerned that perhaps your internet
service provider had some restrictions on your login sessions which
necessitated only downloading messages every few weeks. I assume now that this
is not the case, so I am glad to see your recent change. I felt then, and
still feel, that Brian was not trying to "police" the reflector like some
kind of Gestapo officer, but was trying to find a way to make a wider appeal to
you to ease up and give the rest of us a break. I am sorry that you saw it as
a personal attack, because I do not believe it was intended as such.
So...please understand that there is no conspiracy (at least none that I know
of !) to remove you from the group. But also understand that a change in
your messages along the lines I have tried to point out may very well
increase the percentage of the group which actually reads and benefits from
what YOU have to say.
I have tried to be both honest and constructive in what I have written. I
think you have had many worthwhile things to say in the past, and I look
forward to many more in the future. But I appeal to you to consider how
you can make your messages easier to read and profit from.
Stan Zygmunt
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Valparaiso University