Garry K. wrote

The only way this is going to work, methinks, is if it is based on
content. Otherwise you'll either get people posting to *all* the lists,
or else many posts won't reach the people who would be interested in
them. Therefore, if you really want to do this, allow me to make a
counter-proposal. We could have five seperate lists as follows:

[list snipped]

Comments?

If a split like this could be accomplished and maintained easily, I think
it would be worth a try.  Consider.

There are people on the list who *do not* want any of the spam.  They just
want to read the fanfics, and send c&c.  They would not have to subscribe 
to the spam mailing list.

There are also those that do not want to take part in the discussion of
fanfics, or read other people's c&c.  Instead, they prefer to send their
c&c directly to the author.  These people would not need to subscribe to
the discussion list.

There are those people who *only* read Ranma ff, and those that read 
anything but.  And those those that only read Ranma and Sailor Moon
fanfics.  These people could subscribe to the appropriate mailing lists.

I think that crossposting can be avoided by the software at the admin's
end of things.  The software would simply refuse to forward anything 
that is cc'ed to more than one list @fanfic.com. The only reason I can
think of for crossposting, would be for xovers.  I'm not sure how those
would be handled.

For those who like the mailing list the way it is now, they would simply
subscribe to all the lists.  If the lists were set up right, it would make
mail even easier to read.  Instead of the [FFML] header, it would specify
which mailing list the message came from.  So if you do not feel like 
reading spam that day, all mail from spam@fanfic.com could either be 
deleted or saved for another day.

It seems to me that it would be a win win situation.  For those who like
the ffml the way it is now, it would remain essentially unchanged.  For
those who want to cut down on the volumn, they could customize their
subscriptions accordingly.

The amount of Spam might increase, but that shouldn't bother anyone on the
spam mailing list.  That's what they want, after all.

By using filtering software on the users end, the disccusion list could
be fine-tuned to accept discussion of only the fic lists the user is on.  
For example, if the user is only on the [MISC FF ML], they could filter 
out any discussion from the other two fic lists.  It seems to me, that 
this could only increase the amount of discussion and c&c going on.

I'm not completly sold on the idea myself, but I think this idea might
well benifit the list.  What would be the drawbacks?

-- 
Erik Schweitzer (Who also remembers 'The good ole' days.' :)                  

Founding member of the (defunct) ZAV fanclub for deranged Ranmaniacs.

Virgo, Virgo, where for arte though Virgo?

*sniff*