Design

After researching email lists a few things became clear about what I wanted to build. There are two main areas I would like to focus on:

ASCII
I want to make something that works as an email list without requiring any web access.  I like this constraint because without it this project could go anywhere.  It also means that it can be used by a greater number of people in more situations. 

Dynamic Membership
An area of email lists that I think has been under-explored is that of dynamic membership.  Six degrees has pioneered in this respect, but I still think that it has left a lot to be desired.

Another area that tempted me was that of visual representation of the posts, in order to maker the sociometry of the groups more apparent.  Unfortunately this would be very hard to do in ASCII, and really relies upon more thread information than email headers usually contain. I also think that these representations could open up a lot of group dynamics that might be best left in the realm of the inexplicable with out the need for accompanying therapy!
         
Social Atoms
The people that we interact with everyday can be very influential on the type of person that we are.  Jacob Moreno went as far as to say that the smallest unit of society is not the individual but the social atom.  That is a person and the relationships that they have with those close to them. As we change the way we relate to people and who we are close to, so we change as well.  We are not isolated individuals we exist in a context.

One of the problems with email lists in general is the sheer volume of mails.  Lists with over 25 active members can be very demanding. In life we might shift our focus of social activity from one group of people to another some people will drift in and out of social groupings.  This happens in email lists too, but there is scope for enabling this to occur in more dynamic and fluid ways.

On a regular email list you get mails from everyone on the list.  You can filter mails from certain individuals if you wish but that would be strange because everyone else on the list would still get their mails.
         
Dynamic Mailing Lists / Email Areas / The Uncrazymadness List Experiment
The name is still unresolved but I have designed an email list in which not every member of the list receives mail from everyone else on the list.  You get mails based upon how you rate other members of the list and how they in turn rate others. You can set a person's rating from 0 to 10, however that person's final rating with respect to you may end up being increased or decreased depending upon how others that you rate highly rated that same person.  That is to say the people you endorse also have influence over who you will receive messages from.

Example:
You endorse Harry by giving him a 7. You are not so keen on the messages that Sheryl is posting to the list so you have rated her with an ambivalent 5. However Harry has rated her at 7.  He is the only other person that you have rated that has a rate for her.  Because you rated Harry with 7, he has a 70% influence over your rating.  The difference between your ratings is 2, 70% of 2 is 1.4, add that to your rating and get 6.4, then take the average of 6.4 and 5 which is 5.7, round this to a whole number and get 6. So Harry has raised your final rating of Sheryl to 6.

An important thing about this example is that the converse may not be true.  You have not necessarily brought down Harry's final rating of Sheryl, it depends upon how he has rated her.

Also worth noting is that you don't have to have rated someone to get mails from them.  You get mails from people that the people you have rated highly also rate highly.Again this doesn't necessarily mean that they will receive mails from you.

Another important feature of the list is the tolerance setting.  Members can set a tolerance to only get emails from people above a certain final rating.

Below I have listed some of the commands and features of the dynamic mailing list.

Commands
Commands are sent to the list or command address, with the command in the subject header.

subscribe (body = MemberName)
This will subscribe you to the list. Your name will be whatever you write in the body of the message.  This will be the alias that people will know you by.  They will not have access to your email address unless you give it to them.

set MemberName 2
This is how you give your endorsement rating for an individual.  You only need do this if you feel strongly about someone.  It would be possible to use this quite irregularly however if no-one set new ratings for others the list would be quite static.

get report
This will return a report with your settings and some information about your ratings.  See the report template below.  Also possible are set report daily, and set report weekly.

get popular
This will return the most popular members posts on the on the list.  To stop getting them you could send a stop popular message.

tolerance 4
This will mean that you will receive posts from people for whom you have final ratings of over 4.

set intro (body introduction)
When you join the list you will be requested to set an introductory message.  These will be sent out to everyone on the list once a week or on request (get newintros, get intros) and can be a good way to get people to rate you.

Mail Footer
This mail was set by MemberName.
To receive more or less mails from people that MemberName endorses, then increase you rating of MemberName by replying to this mail with the subject: set MemberName (your rating from 0-10 where 0 is a rejection 10 is a full endorsement).

New Member Post
Every week every member will receive a list of introductions from new members.

Report
Average Rating: 5
No. of reciprients: 5
No. of  people you receive messages from: 24 people
No. of reciprocals (you receive their mails and they receive yours):
Tolerance: 4
Intro: description of yourself. MemberName::Connections::YourRating::FinalRating
Greg::3::5::6
Harry::4::3::5
Jenny::2::8::5
Micheal::4::3::2

Scenarios
So far I have described the workings of the software.  It will be in the use that the real nature of this design will emerge. I have tried to imagine some scenarios that could emerge in this environment.

There could be lists where there were some quite distinct subgroups of people who formed through sharing different interests within the broad topic of the list itself.  On a Martial Arts list for example, their might be a cluster of people mainly interested in technique, another group more interested in the history and spirituality, and another set more interested in related films and culture.  Some people would receive mail from all three but most would be in a small sector, unaware of the other discussions.

There might me another list in which there were a few list stars who were very popular and nearly everyone on the list received their mails, and that constituted the main activity on the list.

There might be a list with a central hub of main participants and then smaller groupings on the outskirts of that.  Or conversely a situation where there is an almost homogenous distributions of small reciprocal pairings and triplings.


Problems
It is hard to imagine what these lists might be like, though it s clear that they will have some problems.  If the system is successful they will get ironed out through evolution.  Here are some potential problems:

Newbies.
When you first join you may not receive any mails unless you have rated at least one person.  How did you get there name?  I imagine that people would tell each other about these lists through word of mouth and websites.  But who would endorse a newbie?  What if you joined a list and new no-one?  That is why I included the introductions, but I am not sure if people will bother to endorse someone on the basis of that.

Rejects.
Getting rejected is awful in any situation, these lists might highlight this social process.  At worst it might compound it by sending lowly rated people into a downward spiral of reiterated rejections negatively feeding back on themselves.

Interface.
Fitting all this interface into a system that hasn't been designed for it pushes the limits of usability.  Universal access is a good thing to strive for, and email takes us in that direction,  perhaps it is possible to have a system that will work as described but also have  other interfaces built on top of it.  There could be special mail clients, or web pages that send commands off behind the scenes at the press of a button or input of a new rating.

Group cohesion.
It could be strange to receive only half a conversation, because you do not receive mails from the other participants.  This too could be the inspiration for endorsing others.

Warm up and boundries.
Like the six degrees list it could be strange to post an email and not really know who is going to read it.  I think that that is true of a lot of the internet though.  The personal often becomes very public.

Conclusion
At best this system could provide a new type of social space that doesn't exist.  Where individuals have a greater control over the quality and quantity of mail that they receive.