Back in the dark days of Usenet, the addition of newsgroups followed a familiar pattern. While various voting schemes were used for a while, there seemed to be a fairly common, but implicit and unexamined, belief that the creation of a group about a topic of interest would magically fill itself with content and discussion among interested participants - a sort of "if you build it, they will come" approach.
The thing is, it really doesn't work that way. The way the tallk.politics.* hierarchy most productively grew was to have a talk.politics.misc at the top level and, over time, it became evident that a topic generated enough discussion that a subject like guns, abortion, drug policy, and so on, could be peeled off as its own subject area, or, looked at more cynically, it was evident that, no matter what, there was a sizeable contingent who compulsively yammered on about whatever it was, to the exclusion of other subjects - a sort of conversational kudzu.
Looked at either way, the best way to to was to let the garden grow the way it was growing, rather than to tend and prune and train every bud. There's an apocryphal story, told on countless campuses, that when the walking paths were made, they just let the students walk where they wanted, and then paved the paths that got beaten down in the grass.
I could, for example, say "My God, the courts are an entire branch of the government, and we don't have a forum for the general discussion of the law, legal developments, cases of note, and the judiciary!" and browbeat you about that obvious deficiency of DU.
But, good golly, as fascinating a topic it may be, and as central to our system of government it is, aside from the occasional "Scalia said an inflammatory thing!" (again), from a practical standpoint I know that setting out the tea set and saying "let's talk about what I want to talk about, and hear you talk about" doesn't really stimulate a discussion - no matter how compelling or fascinating a topic it may be.
So, Skinner, here's my question:
What is your favorite dessert?
|
