BP is a two-way serial publication of which you, the reader, are a 
participant, a journalist of your world view… so, tell us what is in your 
world - that is signal. Think of it as a magazine in which a single page 
ranges from historic nail charts, tool reviews, case study, legal issues, Mad 
Magazine, Bible study, Tupperware shopping, to electric stud guns and 
restoration of the Face on Mars.

Though silence is possibly the optimal noise:signal ratio it is hardly 
sociable and goes against the reason of BP, which is more to the point to be 
unreasonable, to seek corridors outside the theater lobby, to encourage 
creativity, to throw about our shadows and masks in role play, and to sustain 
the humor and spirit of the subscribers, who do happen to be in their day 
jobs preservationists, or wanna be preservationeers, or for those who are 
simply sympathetic to histo presto and enjoy the soap opera, or those who 
simply find themselves stuck here hitting the delete key. Without noise we 
are stick figures. With noise there is context and our individual angst gains 
character in the belonging.

My work life is manic and seriously unrelenting - without the relationships 
that I have developed, the sense of attachment and caring that I have for the 
subscribers to this list, I would be at a serious loss. Despite this, I am 
uncomfortable dancing around on a stage with silent gawkers.

BP has an anti-lurker policy, of which the list owners (which includes the 
"regular contributor"), and everyone else in the community, have been lax. 
One resolution to the problem of noise:signal ratio is to remove not the 
noise, but the desire for signal -- completely… and simply to eliminate all 
those lurkers who desire signal, but give no signal by the act of lurking, as 
compensation for the enfeebled among us who on principle are compelled to 
chatter in order to sustain the illusion of the BP ball in motion - to those 
of us who worry that even in our most mundane and ridiculous roles that 
emoting on BP is doing something not for ourselves, but for each other.

In light of this, and in celebration of three years of delightful chaos, I 
propose that I suspend all lurkers from BP. Please advise.

][<en Follett