[CAUT] New Format--yuck

[Fred Sturm]

On Mar 7, 2011, at 8:31 AM, David Love wrote:

> I'm sure that the move to do this was well intended but in terms of my
> participation, I can see this has just added enough unnecessary  
> steps to
> make it questionable as to whether it's worth the trouble.  It's  
> certainly
> less expedient and that may be enough to push me out of active
> participation.  If that was the intention, to make it just that much  
> more
> difficult to try and remove some of the chatty garbage that tends to  
> clog
> the lists then I would say it's a success.  But if the idea is to  
> encourage
> participation by making it easier, then so far it's a failure.


	I don't know anything about interfacing with this using PDA, but I  
have found, through a good bit of fooling around to learn the ropes,  
that with a laptop it isn't so bad. Certainly different, and not as  
convenient, but I am happy to put up with that extra bit of work in  
exchange for all the positives. (Maybe the confusion about where posts  
come from is due to the PDA notification as opposed to the text option  
I use - it is easy to see the difference by the heading showing where  
the post came from: caut vs. noreply at egroups).
	We are used to a listserv, with instant communication in a fairly  
chatty format. We have two lists, each of which is pretty general in  
content. Topics ebb and flow, threads last a while and die.  
Participation is essentially dominated by maybe 20 people on each  
list. Lots and lots of people try them and find them far too time- 
consuming to participate in, keep up with.
	The format of more focused discussion groups ("communities") has the  
potential of keeping threads alive for longer,going into topics in  
more depth with less repetition, getting more participation from a  
variety of people. They offer the opportunity to post files, once and  
for all, for anyone to search and use (no more posts asking someone or  
other to give yet for the umpteenth time a spreadsheet for X). The  
archives become that much more easily searchable.
	I, for one, will abandon the listserv quite happily. It will be quite  
different, but change isn't always a bad thing.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to  
shape it.” Brecht