Re: radsafe partitioning

[jdelahunt@cc.colorado.edu (John DeLaHunt)]

>As a new subscriber to the Radsafe mailing list, I have been overwhelmed not
>only by the large volume of daily mail, but by the diversity of its scope as
>well.   Although there may be others with sufficient time and broad range of
>interests to digest all of this material, I find too much on the daily
>mailing of no interest to me, and despite my largely retired status, I have
>better things to do with my time than to peruse postings which are of no
>interest to me.

This is a common complaint on many excellent internet lists where the signal
exceeds the noise by a factor of 20.  Like radsafe.  And SAFETY.

>However, I would strongly urge that the
>RADSAFE mailing list be considered for partitioning into separate subject
>areas, to one or more of which individuals with narrower interests (and
>restricted time) could subscribe. One sample breakdown might resemble the
>following:

This was discussed on SAFETY two years ago, and collapsed miserably due to
newcomers' lack of understanding and everyone's general lack of willingness
to effect the change, each on their own.

The result was a fee-for-service list, EnSafety (Enhanced SAFETY), wherein
all SAFETY postings are reviewed daily by moderators for content (so that
mee-toos, unsubscribes, content-free postings and wanton flames -- what we
call spam -- are deleted) and forwarded with subject heading additions.  

Subscribers may pick and choose what topics they want to see -- Lab Managers
can get ChemSafe, LabSafe and Regs, while Facilities Management safety
officers can get EmerResp, MangSafe and IndSafe.  Hopefully, you get the
idea.  Some EnSafety subscribers subscribe to all topics, use the additions
to the subjects just to sort their mail into manageable lumps.

In the current implementation, this option does _not_ supercede the SASFETY
list, which is still free and open to subscribers, nor do responses from
EnSafety subscribers go only to the EnSafety list.  Through some internet
trickery, they go back to SAFETY, where they can be reviewed and commented
on by those electing to follow SAFETY on the cheap.

The moderating process takes time, and, as was mentioned in another thread,
time is money.  Thus the cost of $50 per person per year, or up to ten
people from one (internet) site for $200.

If there is interest, radsafe could do somthing similar to SAFETY's two-year
odyssey, but voluntary compliance, if SAFETY is any indication, will not
work as well as hoped.  Which means a fee-for-service.  

Is there interest?  If so, I can take the lead in negotiations with the
EnSafety crowd (since I'm one of the moderators...).

John

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