I have read with some interest the recent discussions pertaining to the increasing chattiness of ITForum and the concern that this may drive away some participants. I think that Lloyd has acted both responsibly and responsively with regard to moderating the forum, and I applaud his recent note concerning his mental model of how the forum should work. I do not believe we want to discourage discussion, however ill-structured. I regard the forum as open in the sense that anyone with an interest in instructional technology is invited to listen in or contribute. I listen in much more that I participate, but I regard the listening as worth the effort in spite of chattiness about North-South weather differences and other things. If such apparently inconsequential discussion serves to open a discussion among researchers who might otherwise not have had contact, then something worthwhile has occurred, in my humble estimation. Besides, ITForum is much more structured and informative than other lists to which I subscribe.
Moreover, I do not think that we should ask Lloyd to filter or condense the messages for us. After all, he is already performing a valuable service and taking a significant amount of his time to do so. To discourage his role by asking him to give even more time and effort would be counterproductive. I much prefer the suggestion that participants act responsibly--i.e., minimize discussion that may not be of general interest and perhaps include some indication in the subject field that indicates the relevance of the type of message to follow. It only takes a moment to delete a message. (As an ex-intelligence officer, the security classification BBR comes to mind at this moment: Burn Before Reading; so we can have a DBC classification: Delete Before Continuing.)
Further, I view the discussions as falling into two categories: those structured around the invited papers and others. I believe it is responsible during the week of a structured discussion to focus on the paper and issues being discussed, although occasional participants may even miss this aspect of the forum. At other times, I think the discussion should be as open as reasonable, given the nature of the group and general domain of interest.
Last, it would be foolish to believe that the very top researchers in any field would be regular and active participants in such activities as ITForum, as their schedules are even more demanding than those of us folks way down the intellectual food chain. It would be nice to have some of those top researchers occasionally participate, and I believe that ITForum has achieved this goal.