<VV> Signal to Noise Ratio (no direct Corvair)

[Bill Elliott]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:45:49 -0500, Dave Keillor wrote:

>Like Ken Hand and others, I find the signal to noise ratio on Virtual Vairs
>to be much too low.  After being gone for about a week came back to several
>hundred VV emails which were summarily sent to the trash bin.  I have a
>modest proposal to help better manage the "noise".


As an alternative point of view, I am subscribed to over a dozen mailing lists similar to VV... and get several hundred emails per day. I very quickly scan 
through what I want to read (most often a combination of subject and author) and discard the rest. Takes nearly no time at all... and I have a handy 
reference file for those "savers".

I initially tried opting for "digest" mode, but found that took longer to sort through than individual emails. If you are in overload, consider switching to 
individual mails to see if you can deal with that better.

I also regularly visit "forum" types of list; one being a quite popular Corvair forum: http://www.corvaircenter.com/cc_forum.htm   So there already is a 
viable alternative to the VV method.

Others included the MiniMania forum: http://www.minimania.com/msgthreads.cfm, an Allante forum: http://66.34.30.72/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?
board=talk  ... and a praticularly good forum setup at http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/vinyl/bbs.html (non-automotive, of course)

Each of these has pros and cons. The MiniMania forum has about the same signal to noise ratio that VV does (actually a bit worse)... or about the 
same SNR as the typical Corsa or LBC club meeting.

The Allante group is very tightly sectioned. I find myself ignoring most of the "social" sections (mainly becasue I have little in common with other Alante 
owners) and concentrating on the technical sections. I think I miss a lot that way and do not really consider myself part of the "Allante Community" like 
I do Corvairs and Minis.

Ditto for audioasylum, though that does have a nifty feature to search all forums simultaneously. 

As an aside, fastvairs is available in a more graphical forum on yahoo groups... how many of us read that regularly as opposed to getting email? Very 
few, I'd guess.

So I like things the way they are... there is VV-talk for those truly off-subject discussions... and while the VV SNR has been pretty poor for the past 
couple of weeks, it generally is very acceptable... as good as if not better than most of my other email lists.

Bill Elliott
Urbana, MD