RE: THE DEN

["John K. Balor" <balor1999@yahoo.com>]

I agree with those talking about Topica, smartgroups.com and similar for making conversation flow more smoothly, letting Jim Clauson focus on the quality control and improvement of the DEN process (or system) rather than quality control of each and every email that gets posted to the DEN.
   
  However, some groups add footers to each mail that gets posted (as does Yahoo Groups), and due to security issues where I read my posts, I'm only able to receive pure text files, like the current DEN format.
   
  I think it would be contrary to the Deming philosophy to change from the current format to Topica, smartgroups.com or whatever before analysing the quality criteria and the stability of the current process.  One shouldn't change a system just for the fun of changing the system.  There should be measurable improvements.
   
  How do we measure the quality of the DEN anyway?  The number of members being stable over time, as measured per year?  The number of messages posted each month being stable over time?  The number of complaints to Jim Clausen being small and stable over time?
   
  John