[pct-l] On Topic/Off Topic

[Craig Stanton]

I sometimes find myself scanning past some of the injokes and personal banter on this list, or reports of fires that won't be burning when I start off next year, but I am glad to have all of them as part of the list. I'd like to suggest posts that are not going to be looked up in future years by people getting ready for the hike have the this in their title [OT], meaning off topic. It'd be up to the poster to decide if what they are saying is relevant or not.
It worked well for other email lists I have been on and if a newbie joins the list they can see where the useful stuff is and see where the general talk stuff is.

~Craig

On Monday, October 02, 2006, at 01:36PM, Wayne Kraft <wayneskraft at comcast.net> wrote:

>I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but this venerable e-mail  
>list appears to be terminally ill.  Only bland posts relating to the  
>PCT nuts and bolts (water here, none there;  saw so-and-so in Section  
>E yesterday; can you buy Heet at El Cajon? etc.) seem to pass  
>muster.  With this obvious exception, I've stopped posting to this  
>list.  Even though I've been monitoring it for 3 years, I can't tell  
>what is acceptable and what isn't.  Any humorous banter or  
>controversial subject matter is subject to censure by the nattering  
>nabobs of negativity.  Recently the topic of forest fires was banned  
>on this list.  This is inconceivable to me.  I can't imagine a topic  
>more relevant and pressing to anyone who hikes the PCT.  At the  
>moment, I would say that the banter initiated by Reinhold and  
>Switchback is about all that keeps this list alive.  Data is useful,  
>a chuckle is priceless.
>
>The email list format is just about deceased everywhere.  I think  
>only the glory of the PCT itself and the vast personal store of  
>knowledge possessed by some of the subscribers has kept this email  
>list alive so late in the game.  The PCT, as a topic, could certainly  
>support an internet discussion forum and a few rather lame attempts  
>have been made to create such a resource in the past.  The only one  
>with a half-decent format was created by a person whose contributions  
>to this list have been so incessantly negative that apparently no one  
>has any desire to participate.
>
>What the PCT needs is something like this, but I haven't the  
>technical expertise to create it:
>
>http://portlandhikers.com/default.aspx
>
>Wayne Kraft
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