[CAUT] New Format--yuck

[Paul T Williams]

Fred,

If indeed the new format gets morphed into something more usable, I would 
be all for it.  If it went back to an email based system, I would be all 
in favor of a number of lists instead of just 2 or 3. I do like the 
extensive list of choices on what one might want to see.  We'll see what 
happens next, but I'm not hearing a lot of hip horrays yet.  Maybe too 
soon....

Best,
Paul




From:
Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
To:
caut at ptg.org
Date:
03/07/2011 10:35 AM
Subject:
Re: [CAUT] New Format--yuck



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




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