[no subject]

[Tassos Nakassis <nakassis at osi3.ncsl.nist.gov>]

  I assume that subscription to this or to any other list occurs because the 
 subscriber expects to derive residual benefits.  If all of us are
 willing to pocket the difference  (value of message)-(cost of message)
 over the "good messages", is it outrageous to absorb the corresponding
 loss over the "bad messages"?  And why is it that when we talk of cost
 we forget the monetized value of our time (which is, I suspect, worth
 to us and our employers much more than the obvious cost)?

   I have yet to meet somebody who did not have a peeve list.
 Nevertheless,  a good number of people have come to the conclusion that
 "bad stuff" cannot be eliminated without the type of surgery that 
 removes a lot more of healthy tissue.  Is it necessary to open a
 "freedom of mail" debate 
 as if we were ignorant of all related/relevant issues that have already
 been debated (and largely settled) on the subject of freedom of speech?

  In any event, if you are all hell bent on regulating irrelevant traffic,
I would suggest the following scheme:

  (1) Each of us would receive a number of tokens/credits each month;

  (2) Mail would remove tokens and would be possible only while
      positive credits are available;

  (3) Tokens could be increased/decreased via positive/negative votes
      that the list would send (when aroused) to the list server.

  (4) Issues for further study:

      How to set limits on positive/negative votes;  Should we have
      voting rights tokens?

      What is the optimal token allocation/removal scheme for a given set
      of resources/users?  What will be the upper bound of the noise to 
      acceptable messages ratio?


                sincerely,

                              Tassos Nakassis.