On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 04:05:01AM -0500, Claire Rojstaczer <ambyrglow at softhome.net> wrote: > > If you use outlook express, then you won't be waiting an hour to > >download a g'jillion *yes, that is a real number...at least today it > >is :)* emails with most having been rather off-topic recently in my > >opinion. > Is it possible for a discussion to be off-topic if the author who is > the topic of the list is participating in the discussion? Depends on the list. On the Continuing Time list, there were two main threads of discussion: the writing of the author (Daniel Keys Moran) and the (usually political) discussions spawned by those writings. There were enough of the latter, and enough interest in them, to form a separate list based on the first, for explicitly off-topic discussions that included the same basic audience of people who participated in the original list. That model seems to be working pretty well. Disclaimer: I run the spin-off list I mentioned. -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp