Kai Radicke wrote:
> I do you know what the hell bandwidth is? Don't tell me what bandwidth is
> and don't tell me not to waste it, the world news media has done one hell
> of a job, brainwashing everyone into thinking that the Internet is low and
> doesn't have enough bandwidth. BullShit!
Kai, clearly you don't know what bandwith means. Or worse, you
know ONE of the meanings of bandwith, but not the fully correct
one that the original poster was clearly using.
The bandwith that he is referring to is "list bandwith", which
is analogous to human bandwith when reading lists. It's the
old signal to noise thing.
For us to follow this list takes time and effort. We only
have so much of this time and effort, this is our human
bandwith.
Increasing the useful content of the list increases bandwith,
but has greater returns, and I don't think we lose users
because of it. I'll read as many messages a day as I possibly
can if every one makes me smarter about british cars.
Increasing the USELESS content of the list increases the
time commitment required to follow the list, but nobody
wins. I don't care how somebody voted in the last 9 municipal
elections, and it takes time out of my day and gives me
nothing.
Eventually the bandwith of the list (the S/N ratio) becomes
so low that it's not worth it. The dyi_efi list is a good
example, it's like 5% EFI discussion and 95% general car
crap. This scared all the truly useful EFI people away, the
problem fed itself, and the list is doomed forever.
This list has a lot of traffic. Who wants to read 50 useless
messages a day just because they might see one go by that
could interest them?
Not me.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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