On 7/13/02 12:26 PM, "Roger B.A. Klorese" <rogerk@queernet.org> wrote:
>> I don't know of anyone who actually uses mailing lists who thinks this way.
>
> Once again, different populations. We get most of our subscribers from
> "the real world"
The implication being that Nick's users are from -- Mars? Venus?
All this continues to show is that there is no "right answer" -- that most
of this is subjective and the decisions have to be made based on the
knowledge of the owner and knowing the preferences of the user base. I'm not
sure we do ourselves or our users favors by always devolving these
discussions into things that sound like the christians and muslims arguing
that THEIR god is the one true god (and I'll be the first to admit I do it
too, although I'm trying to be more sensitive to it...). The world would be
a lot less noisy if we could all agree to agree to disagree and find common
ground instead of polarizing ourselves -- but we're part of the real world,
too.
Except, I guess, nick's users.
But seriously, this is an area of increasing fascinating to me. You go to
different lists run by different people, and you see highly divergent ways
of dealing with stuff, and (usually) populations for which those choices and
management styles work fine. And I'm really curious why.
Is it generational?
Is it the overriding style/preferences of the list owner? Does that set the
tone, and then the user population self-selects in or out based on how well
they accept the list style?
Is it a word of mouth issue? Do existing list users tend to bring in "like
minded" users to join the user group?
Is it something else?
I think it's ALL of those things to some degree. I'm just not sure how they
relate and which ones are the driving pieces. I'm becoming more convinced
that it's the list-owner and how they position/manage the list that is the
key item, however. That's one reason why I think "absent landlord" lists end
up tending to drift to anarchy and so often get taken over the the trolls.
Is this an emerging "list owner as CEO" model?
Hmm.
--
Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/
Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh
nervously and change the subject.
Follow-Ups:
References:
|
|
