On Tue, 25 Feb 2003 16:20:29 -0800
Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui@plaidworks.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 25, 2003, at 02:22 PM, J C Lawrence wrote:
>> Yeah, a point there that shouldn't ignored is that with rare
>> exception a large "leeching" audience is required to derive and
>> support a smaller contributing audience.
> I've long felt that every interesting list has a hierarchy of
> users. You have to identify and groom your "wizards", those couple of
> people who take the main responsibility to generate discussion, answer
> questions, whatever. Below that are a group of frequent users, and it
> quickly fades to black after that. very much a power curve.
Yup.
> and yes, that means "everyone is equal" is not part of the
> equation. If a wizard and a lurker fight, I'll usually choose the side
> of the wizard. wizards get cut slack for stuff, too. don't like it?
> tough: they're in the trenches making the list useful most of the
> time, they get special privileges, because they've earned it...(on the
> other hand, their power is far from absolute. just not the same as
> someoen who doesn't contribute)
I follow the basic mongol pattern of kha khan (loosely an award such
that the recipient could commit several insta-death-sentence acts with
impunity).
Quality posters (I distinguish between volume and quality) who add the
real meat to the list, who define topics, and vantages, and factually
set the ground that the list walks on get enourmous slack from me, they
know it, and they know that its a trust issue (which latter is probably
the reason so few of them ever misbehave).
As for the rest of the list I tend to moderate based on a sense of how
the list is going as a whole at the current time. If things are falling
off in various ways (posting rate down, signal down, chattiness high, or
whatever) I get tighter, twitchier, and less tolerant of infractions
(which mostly means I edit or reject much a higher percentage of
submitted posts). If things are swimming marvelously, with real work
being done I'll even let posts heavy on the "you" word go by.
The kha khan rule gets interesting in a few cases. For instance I've
one poster who is irascible, dogmatic, zealous and tireless on his
crusades -- and frequently just wrong. BUT, he's a useful irritant.
Good, quality conversation surrounds him all the way up until near the
end of one of his runs...
>> How do you structure and present this? Any enforcement other than
>> willingness?
> Lurker days have very loose rules: between this start time and this
> end time, the list belongs to a lurker. a lurker is arbitrarily
> defined as "about two posts a month or less", but there's no
> policeman. We generally tell people "if you aren't sure you're a
> lurker, you probably aren't", but it's really self-policed. and it
> works.
Gotcha. How do you organise/present lurker days? Just post an
announcement that next Wednesday is "lurker day"?
--
J C Lawrence
---------(*) Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw@kanga.nu He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/ Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
Follow-Ups:
References:
|
|
