Topic drift.

That's the problem.

Your minority is going to be very happy if you create a topic header for
them and let them subscribe only to that topic.  But you have to tell
them that topic drift is going to happen from time to time and they're
just going to have to accept it.

What happens is that someone who is NOT self-restricted to that topic
will see a post and hit reply, but their response won't have anything to
do with the topic.  And those replies can grow and grow and grow.

This tends to tick off the people who are just subbed to the special
topic.  Understandably.

So on the one hand, you have to privately write those who commit topic
drift and remind them not to do it, issue public statements that we must
strive not to commit topic drift, and tell the folks complaining about
topic drift that at leat it's better than before topics, right?

The l-soft manual actually says that the only way to make topics work
perfectly is to fully moderate the list -- that is, have somebody glance
at the posts to make sure that the header and the content match.  Lots
of luck there.

So -- if people can understand that mistakes will happen, just institute
the topics.  It has to be better for the group that wants FEWER posts,
even if it isn't perfect.

Mary Schweitzer
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