On 7/5/02 10:36 PM, "J C Lawrence" <claw@kanga.nu> wrote:
> While its not clear, you appear to be splitting the population into list
> users and web forum users for the purposive/chat divide. While there is
> an obvious and glaring generational gap for web forum users (eg I loathe
> web forums and avoid them almost religiously), I'm not so clear that the
> same gap applies to purposive versus chat lists.
Well, I was talking about same-topic/different-format situations, but in the
case of what I call "content" vs. "community" lists, you tend to be right.
But within each type, you'll find users that fall either to the web or the
email preference, and you're starting to see a third preference emerge, that
of Instant Messaging. And since there's a push to start adding backing store
to IM (so messages wait until you wake up and log in again), that's going to
be a drain off email, and to some degree web as well. The newest generation
seems to be growing up on the internet as IM first, other stuff when they
feel like it, so I think we're headed to ANOTHER generational shift here,
while we're still trying to get a handle on the last one.
I'm actually starting to try to figure out what "mailing lists" might be in
an IM environment, assuming a population of non-email types who want to do
this "stuff" via their IM clients. Just in case I'm right.
But it's like that text/HTML thing. Russ might see 99.9% of his HTML mail as
spam -- but that's not typical of the whole world, just the group Russ
interacts with. And with my peer group, it's fairly true as well. But when I
deal with the larger e-mail audience, it sure ain't. If you go riding with a
group of Harley owners, chances are, most of them will ride Harleys. But
don't tell the gold-wing owners that the only bikes to use are Harleys....
> Unless I've grossly misunderstood, Roger has been referring to forking a
> chat list off a purposive list and having both survive well.
Did he? If so, I misunderstood. If so, I'm sorry.
I've done that. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. And eventually, I
killed the last chat list, because volume on the main list dropped back to
tolerable levels, and because we ended up in too many "I want this on the
OTHER list where I don't have to read it" wars. A few self-appointed topic
cops basically killed it by choosing to tell everyone where stuff should go,
and basing that on "I like/I don't like" as the determining factor... Sigh.
And doing it despite our repeated requests to Cut It Out.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/
Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven't fallen
asleep yet.
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