--On Wednesday, April 23, 2025 09:06 -0400 Jeffrey Haas <jhaas@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Tim, > > >> On Apr 22, 2025, at 1:26 PM, 924 GTR <t@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Let's call it what it is. John Levine's weekly email summary is >> best described as surveillance. Yes, surveillance is the right >> word here. > > I agree that it's surveillance. The word itself isn't inherently > bad. Perhaps you might think that's the case. > >> And if this weekly summary is so useful to people, I would be >> interested to see some examples of how they put it to use. >> Obtaining information is not a use. > > If you're in the "gathering data is bad" category of being bothered > by surveillance, minimally it's a very light public reminder that > people regularly mine and analyze list traffic. They've done so > for years. Many of us run our own tooling to do so. Prior to the > more automated forms of these reports, I'd sometimes to frequency > analysis on various mail lists, IETF or not, for my own reasons. > > What do I find useful about this form of report? A few personal > examples. Your mileage may vary. > > The ietf@ list is a noisy cess pool for me, and I generally don't > pay strong attention to it for that reason. I may pay more > attention if specific individuals are active that week. The general > frequency count of total messages vs. individuals of interest will > sometimes draw my attention in terms of "discussion has gotten hot". > > Not covered in the report and things I've done with my own tooling: > - What thread is getting a lot of attention. > - What is the branch pattern for the thread? > + This often tells me if it's a productive conversation. > + I particularly look at some interactions and determine they're > likely toxic noise without even needing to look at the contents > just based on the pattern. >... A tiny addition to Jeff's list: I have often used that summary as a check on myself. If I end up high in the listings with a non-trivial number of messages, it causes me to ask whether, e.g., I've been overreacting on one or more topics and should be reading and thinking more and posting less. Often the answer is "no, seems in balance given what was going on that week", but, sometimes... john
