[Python-ideas] Clearer communication

[Dan Sommers]

On 2/1/19 1:01 PM, Abe Dillon wrote:
 > [Steven D'Aprano]
 >
 >> This isn't Facebook or Reddit, where +1 Likes cause messages to move
 >> to the top of your feed. (And thank goodness for that.) This is a
 >> technical mailing list where the worth of a proposals usually depends
 >> on merit, not the number of votes.
 >
 > Since I just (almost simultaneously with this post) suggested giving
 > Reddit a try, I feel obligated to defend it a little bit.

[...]

 > 2) You can control, to some degree, what gets to the top of your
 > feed. In an email list, it's based on who posted last which seems
 > hardly an improvement.

A mailing list is not a feed.

Whoever posted last ends up at the bottom of the thread, so that I can
read threads from top to bottom in chronological order.  Getting the
last word in shouldn't earn a spot at the top of the list.

In my email client, I do, in fact, have complete control over what gets
to the [logical] "top of the list"; in a web-based forum, I have only
what the forum allows.

 > 3) There are well moderated and/or cultivated subs like
 > www.reddit.com/r/science where the votes end up being a good 
approximation
 > to merit.

Because the moderators understand the merit(s) of who is behind every +1
vote, or because only approved voters are allowed to vote?

Dan, a decades and decades long fan of mailing lists and real email clients