[LINK] RFI: How should virtual group members interact with one another?

David Lochrin dlochrin at aussiebb.com.au
Wed Aug 19 18:19:31 AEST 2020


On 2020-08-19 16:30, Roger Clarke wrote:

> My thinking is that an alive group generates topic-areas where the short-term 'thread' notion becomes inappropriate (particularly for everyone who *isn't* interested), and a medium-term venue is better.
> 
> Yonks ago, for example, someone (Tony Barry?) instituted the unlink list, as a generic Link Institute parking-space for such things.

I remember Unlink: topics which wandered too far away from Link's core interests could be moved there by the Moderator to continue in peace.  I think Unlink was a good idea and I'm curious as to why it wasn't kept; I suspect it simply wasn't used enough to justify its existence, and some threads tend to wander off-topic and back on again anyway.

If a forum moves off-topic frequently enough to be an issue, its original purpose may have become less relevant and/or the interests of its members may have evolved.  In either case I'm inclined to think there are easier ways to deal with the problem than creation of "subchannels" which could complicate things significantly.

David Lochrin



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