This is the most opinionated such list I've seen that I disagree the least with. The WebBS calculator was new to me, and seems like a very clever way of demonstrating to laypeople the concept of bloat!

Dear Parlour,

Regardings my greeting the mailing list, I just stumbled across this
article that seems relevant to OP, especially given my use of "parlour"
as a term here: 
https://qz.com/1533143/the-best-way-to-use-social-media-is-to-act-like-a-19th-century-parisian/


From the article:

[Hannah] Arendt argued [in her 1963 work on the trial of the Nazi Adolf
Eichmann,] that a moral society depends on thinking individuals. In
order to think we need solitude and mental freedom. “Arendt reminds us,
if we lose our capacity for solitude, our ability to be alone with

...whoops, forgot the last paragraph/sentence.

But out of a genuine belief that developing those methods would benefit
themselves, first and fore-most.

Dear Parlour,

Yesterday I was involved in a thread where someone was insistent that
in order to solve the problems in the open-source development world,
we need more developers:

> The reality is that there are not enough developers coming forward
  to help, and that is a social problem that can be resolved by
  non-technical users.

For non-technical users to resolve the issue, they just need to...
become technical users:

> [T]here is a need for more folks to learn development so that these

Eesh! I forgot I'd have to line wrap!

Here's that, more legible:

Dear Internet,

I've created this mailing list as a place for me to strike up
conversations with "the Internet," on whatever topic seems of
interest. It's an alternative to carrying discussions through my
microblog.

A current problem I've been perceiving with my microblog is that
despite the Fediverse's platforms' potential for a curated experience,
the overall culture of the Fediverse around me seems to swing toward a

Dear Internet,

I've created this mailing list as a place for me to strike up conversations with "the Internet," on whatever topic seems of interest. It's an alternative to carrying discussions through my microblog.

A current problem I've been perceiving with my microblog is that despite the Fediverse's platforms' potential for a curated experience, the overall culture of the Fediverse around me seems to swing toward a more... average... online culture. Put another way, as the Fediverse grows its membership from those who come from legacy social media, I see them bringing their culture and it spreading to those parts of the Fediverse older than those "immigrants."

My hope is that by using e-mail for the same sorts of discussions, I can increase the distance in culture between conversations around me, and, as I said, the average online culture.

There's a concept I was taught as a child, that I cannot find any information on in searching online today. Basically, the sharing of opinions should escalate from private discussions with family, to more open discussions with friends and associates, and finally presenting the ideas publicly. First the bedroom, then the family room, then the parlour, then the tavern, then town hall. (I also personally relate the idea to the four boxes of liberty, as a way of splitting up the "soap box")

There were a few reasons for this, as I was taught. The main reason was that it kept you from looking like a fool: trivial flaws in your thinking could be pointed out by a loving spouse or compassionate friend, before you went sharing them with folk at the deli.

Another reason was so that when you said your ideas to someone who would brusquely disagree - more likely the more public the conversation - you would be more experienced in thinking-through and discussing the ideas, so better able to defend the notions, or see that it's not worth the debate at all.