I receieved a note from Paul Dillon this morning which he asked me to
pass along, but which I mistakenly deleted. The substance of the message
was that it would greatly facilitate participation in xcma discussions of
the intense sort generated by the rading of LBE if people would avoid using
reply and make their header's specific to the topic they address. What
happens when new/modified topics are introduced using reply is, he comments,
a kind of semantic drift.
Speaking for myself (with apologies for not simply forwarding the message)
it is ALWAYS helpful when not directly replying to the content of a message
to send a new message with a new header. There appears to be a natural
tendency for xmca discussion to drift, sort of in the manner of Vygotsky's
idea of conceptual complexes. This has some positive consequences because
it makes a number of issues related to the issue at hand visible, but it
makes systematic followthrough more difficult.
Thanks for whoever sent us the rain. We need it.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 01 2001 - 01:01:46 PDT