[TAG] Processing the Mailbag

[Kat]

On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 04:42:31PM +0100, Thomas Adam wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 08:32:22AM -0700, Kat wrote:
> > What does "worthy" mean in this respect?
> 
> Nothing much, actually.  It's simply a subjective viewpoint as to whether
> the information contained in answering the question is full and has lots
> of information relating to it.  You have to realise that for many months
> we were publishing TAG articles when they probably wouldn't have ever been
> published, simply because responses, and more importantly questions were
> waining. 

I think I've been asking the wrong questions.

It sounds like you're saying that you feel there's good reason not to
simply publish (nearly) everything that comes through the TAG list.

Perhaps this is a philosophical difference regarding the purpose of
publishing the contents of TAG in LG?

My understanding is that the Knowledge Base is meant to be a reference
for "need help on this topic that was discussed before", whether it's as
articles or as e-mail discussion. TAG/Mailbag is published as a public
record of the list discussion(s).

I'm not getting how "worthy" comes into the selection of threads for
TAG.


> > Why was it important for threads to be ended before they were
> > included?
> 
> Because there might have been some additional information that might have
> been useful, but to publish after publication tends to break continuity.

Hence my solving this with the "Followup" style.

This can't help with links from the originating issue, because of the
need to be static, but it does mean that there are obvious breadcrumbs.


> Note that a thread generally never "ends", it's more an informed decision
> as to whether or not the replies one currently has in a particular thread
> are enough to make it worthwhile.

This is where I depart from the old style again. Threads are only
evaluated for "date prior to cutoff for this issue" and then for
"Laundrette matters" or "obvious SPAM/nonsense", and then everything
else gets sorted for *where* it goes, not whether.


 
> > Did all the short ones make it into General/Tips/etc., or were they
> > discarded?
> 
> Not discarded per se.  Please note that from my email on LGang as to how
> this all works, I would often put those shorter topics (that were clearly
> still on going) into the Def/ directory (Deferred), and would then carry
> that over next month and merge the replies into that thread.

What would you do with the "someone sent a reply 3 weeks later" sort of
thing? I've got a system for handling that now, but I'd like to know how
much of a change this is.

 
> > Was there a quality bar, and what happened to the things that fell
> > below it?
> 
> There never was a quality bar -- it's entirely subjective.  Those replies
> that were sub-standard for TAG (typically the entire thing is done by
> length of replies) were put into TAG, or just Deferred.

If something is declared substandard and "Deferred", then even if it's
not deleted, it's effectively not-present and not-going to be present in
LG, yes?

Maybe you and I are doing the same thing -- "this response is babble,
and isn't either amusing nor informative". 


Kat