<nettime> this time non-competetive split?

[Joerg Heiser <joergheiser@csi.com>]

the official reason for the nettime.free split off - issues of free
expression - reminds me a bit of a ghostly "debate" that has been fueling
italian Flash Art magazine on its letter page for years now, chief editor
Politi pathetically argueing for the freedom of expression of Alexander
Brener, an artist who had painted a dollar sign on a Malewitsch in
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Taking into account the general idea of art
the magazine puts forth, it very much looks like a bad combination:
abstract radicalism in one very tiny, detached issue, concrete
stupidism/autism/reactionarism in the big micro- and macropolitical rest. 

The difference here is, though, the split on nettime has triggered a good
debate that, for example, led to the outing of the Anonymous Lurkers (can
I still join despite of this posting?) and could lead on to a constructive
remodeling of nettime itself. 

A suggestion for a, this time non-competetive split of nettime into three
seperate lists:

nettime.d: debate, news

nettime.e: essays, interviews

nettime.w: weird stuff

everybody is free to subscribe to one, two or all three lists. When you're
subscribed to more than one, you can easily see from the subject heading
to which list the message belongs and delete or open (for example: no,
this week I don't have time for lenghty essays, but I want to
follow/contribute to the discussion). All three lists would be moderated
basically in the same way as nettime is moderated at the moment, which i
think is ok as long as the modes of it can be traced if there are
objections to it (for example, if a lenghty contribution to the debate is
considered too little refering to the rest or off the way, but generally
good for the essay list, a short reference note can be made on the debate
list). 

It might seem a bit like the sections in a paper magazine or channels on
cable tv, but as it is not structured according to content (culture,
politics etc.) but communicational status (discussion,
lecturing/interviewing, experiment/babble), it simply is not. You can call
this hierarchy, but it's a hierarchy where you can chose what's at the top
(for example, subscribe only to the weird stuff list). 

There's a risk in people not being confronted anymore with stuff they don't
expect, but then again, you should be able to chose if you want to be
confronted - and such a structuring leaves that open.

And there's a risk in moderators deciding what's (too) weird and what's
not: but that's what they do anyway, only this time you would be able to
trace the decisions if you want. 

I'm not an expert on the technical and moderation extra work this makes,
but maybe one can reduce the amount of work if nettime.free is kindly
offered to participate. :)

All this would mean to say goodbye to a mythical, glamourous idea of the
one big netculture-avantgarde-arena, the one in-the-know list of people
gathered around one pool. But maybe that is overdue anyway.

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