Dear Friends and Flamers,
OOOOOPS! I seem to have stepped in some electronic "doo-doo" here! I think that
one beat last year's discussion about the "world's tallest MEMS structure!"

Based on the public and private responses my stupidly posted message generated,
this is certainly a "hot button" among the discussion group participants.

My point was not suggest ruining a valuable and educational method of
information transfer, but rather to open some discussion regarding the
possibility of making it more efficient. I was under the impression from Peter
Will that ISI already did filtering to some extent. I must have misunderstood
him, so let's forget about that idea.

Party-line message systems (every message to every subscriber) as we now have
only work really well if the volume is moderate. If the system is successful,
the volume becomes high, and those trying hard to answer questions have to weed
them out from the many answers to each one. Can you imagine if the interest
groups on America Online or Compuserve sent all group subscribers every
question and response? That's why they are categorized and made easily
accessible to anyone searching a particular subject.

It is clear to everyone that the MEMS discussion group lowers barriers for
entry and can provide valuable information to the whole community. If nobody
wants to change things, so be it. I will continue to wade through the messages
because my group and I want to help answer the questions, especially those of
people just getting started. We also provide this service (with considerable
volume of requests) through the NSF-sponsored National Nanofabrication User
Network (NNUN), which provides low-barrier hands-on or remote access to
sophisticated fabrication facilities at several sites in the U.S. I am afraid
that by letting the volume grow, many folks who would otherwise take the time
to answer the posted questions will simply not see them if they don't have time
to do the weeding. Maybe that won't be the case. We'll see.

Does anyone know of a simple way to separate questions from answers at the
email reader's end (or to group answers by topic) that can be used by the
"masses" and operates without manual editing? That way, we could each taylor
things to our liking without changing a thing at the central office...

Thanks,
Greg Kovacs