con etiquete

[Ken Miller]

Hello,

I enjoy receiving connectionists to keep abreast of technical issues,
meetings, new papers.  But lately the flow of messages has become very large
and the signal to noise has noticeably decreased, and these trends have been
sustained for a long enough time that they seem likely to represent a change
rather than a fluctuation.

I think the reason is a change to a more "conversational" mode, in which
people feel free to post their very preliminary and not-very-substantiated
thoughts, for example "i think maybe this is good, and i think maybe that is
bad".

I would like to suggest that we all collectively raise the threshold for
what is to be broadcast to the 1000's of us on the net as a whole.  Many of
these "conversational" entries would in my opinion be better kept as private
conversations among the small group of people involved.  When some concrete
conclusions emerge, or a concrete set of questions needing more
investigation emerges, *then* a *distilled* post could be sent to the net as
a whole.  If you will: forward prop through private links, backward prop to
the net as a whole.  This also means that, when a concrete question is
posted, answers unless very solid might best be sent to the poster of
the question, who in turn may eventually send a distillate to the net.

Along the same lines, I would like to make a suggestion that people
*strongly* avoid publicly broadcasting dialogues; iterate privately, and if
relevant send the net a distilled version of the final results.

Finally I would also suggest that the urge to philosophical, as opposed to
technical, discussions be strongly suppressed; please set the threshold very
very high.  

In conclusion, I would like to urge everyone to think of connectionists as a
place for distilled rather than raw, technical rather than philosophical,
discussions.

Thanks,

Ken

p.s. please send angry flames to me, not the net.  ken at cns.caltech.edu