At SIG3000, one topic that was discussed at some length was finding some
way to decrease the overall 3000-L list traffic, or reduce the
signal-to-noise ratio without the need for human moderation (which has
been tried and it is far too time-consuming to fit within anyone's pain
threshold).  I commited to implementing "keyword topics" for the
list, purely optional and backward compatible, to allow subscribers to
select which messages they are interested in; or at a minimum, to filter
out much of the "off-topic" material.

I have taken steps to implement this, but have yet to do a formal
write-up of the change in procedures to take advantage of the keyword
filter.  So this is a "preliminary" description, until I can find the
time to write up something more formally official.  And those of you
that attended SIG3000 know that I am temporarily "typing-challenged"
which doesn't help matters either.

Listserv supports list "topics" when the subscribers adhere to the
format for keyword postings.  This works by placing the "topic" of your
posting in the subject of the mail followed by a colon.  For example,
the "de-facto" standard we have had for off-topic postings
is to include "OT:" before the subject of the message, e.g.:

   OT: Seeking HP3000 contract or perm employment

The "topics" have to be defined to Listserv, and at SIG3000 we came up
with a preliminary list, including mostly SIG names (this was largely
the result of discussion of posting questions to the 3000-L list, where
you will likely get an answer but a lot of noise along with it; versus
posting to the less pervasive Interex SIG mailing lists where you may
not get an answer).  At any rate, the initial topics have been
setup as:

   OT,Administrivia,MPE,IMAGE,SQL,WEB,JAVA,SYSMAN,COBOL,POSIX,CS

There is a "hidden" topic of "OTHER" which gets postings which do not
contain a keyword in the list.  Currently, everyone is subscribed to
all topics (backward compatibility, remember :-) ), so no change in the
list behavior to anyone yet.

For this to work, ideally when you post to the list *please* include
one or more keywords from the list above.  If you are replying to a
message and the topic is missing from the subject, insert one in your
reply (after the [HP3000-L] prefix if you have subjecthdr turned on).
For multiple topics, separate them with a comma, just include a colon
after the last one.

The second step is to set your topic preferences in Listserv.  You can
do this via mail to <[log in to unmask]> with the text 'set hp3000-l
topics xxx,yyyy,zzzz' to set your topics absolutely, or else
you can use 'set hp3000-l topics +xxx,-yyy' to selectively add or remove
topics.  Or even easier, browse to:

   http://raven.utc.edu/cgi-bin/WA.EXE?SUBED1=hp3000-l

and you can select topics from a list of checkbox items on the form.

This is of course just a grand experiment to see if it is a workable
solution.  There are three general categories of outcomes:

* if you do nothing, nothing changes, though we would encourage you
  to start using keywords in your subjects for those that do.

* if you exclude "off-topic" (OT) messages, it will eliminate those
  off-topic postings that are properly identified

* if you exclude "other" you will get *only* properly identified
  topics you select, and may miss some postings on topic but not
  identified as such.

The groundwork is in place, feel free to play/test as you see fit.  And
if I missed some important/significant topics let me know and they
can be added.  We purposely omitted some "very unique" areas that tend
to flourish in the focused Interex groups, but I'm willing to take on
any groups that would like to participate and be identified.  The only
restriction is there is a system limit of 24 (I think) keywords.

I will try to formalize this a bit better in the near future, but right
now I have too many irons in the fire and I'm doing my best to tend to
them left-handed :-)

Jeff Kell <[log in to unmask]>