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On May 12, 2006, at 4:19 PM, Garth Harwood wrote:
I think that while we should try to stay on focus for the most part, in our years of running groups like this, Laurie and I have come to feel that what binds a community together isn't the strictly on-topic postings themselves, but the "side chatter" that tends to creep in over time. We all are here because of a common interest: what turns us into a community (instead of a group of people reading the announcements on a bulletin board somewhere) is where we find commonallities and differences. At the extreme, for the last few years we ran it, our San jose Sharks list was really "stuff talked about by people who all happen to be Sharks fans", as opposed to being a "hockey list" -- which was a lot more fun than just talking hockey. On the other hand, you have to be careful that the chatter doesn't drive out the primary content. It can certainly take on a life of its own. On this list, especially, that'd be a bad thing, since the data found here is in many ways a single source (you can't go to another list to get it) and both time sensitive and really important to folks (both professional and not). What we do on other lists, and what I suggest here, is a fairly simple matter of self-policing: a little side chatter is good, and it can fill in the blanks between the "on topic" posts. We've always encouraged people to cut the chatter when the list gets busy and let the primary topic content get through; we also encourage folks who prefer ONLY primary content to show a little patience for those that enjoy a little chatter as well. A single mailing list like this requires everyone to show a little compromise and patience -- to some degree, it's a case of "I won't complain when you're talking, but you shouldn't complain when I'm talking". As long as the overall volume of content stays low, there's room for both. As the bird talk grows, though, the other chatter needs to move aside and let it through. Over the years, we've experimented with any number of ways of managing this chatter. Creating a second "chatter" list has never worked, because relatively few people subscribe to it, and it only encourages fights among members over whether a posting belonged on one list or the other. Ditto asking folks to flag things in the subject line. Both of those sound like good ideas up front, but in practice, they invariably lead to people fighting over how to interpret and enforce rules, rather than communicating and using the lists (I've seen lists destroyed by those meta-fights, too). Given the primary purpose of this list, I'd suggest we try to keep the chatter to a minimum -- but if they're things that come along with what we're doing here (birding the bay area), then I see no problem including it here in moderation. Other items of interest seen while birding seems right in line with the intent of the list (butterflies and wildflowers, or, say, whales showing up during a seawatch). On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to see us using the list for discussions of wildflower drives any more than we want to go overboard with out-of-area birding. (FWIW, today I returned from a birding trip down to Morro Bay (40 species, including the peregrines), but I'll write that up elsewhere and post a note for those interested, not put it on the list in total...) I long ago gave up the idea that a list needs to be strictly topic controlled (no "topic nazis" needed!) -- that kind of overly strict control pisses people off and causes more problems than the chatter does. OTOH, this list needs to stay focussed, too; it's a fairly low-volume list, and that's one of its features. I wouldn't want to see us get chattering and double the per-day message volume average... The recent "chatter" has been great, for instance, and I wanted to drop in this note to make sure people feel comfortable about these little "add-ons" to the list. At the same time, I don't want to see it happening too frequently. A list like this is nothing but a series of compromises, since everyone one of us has a different idea of what this list "ought" to contain. 99% of the time, I think people self-police very well, and we forgive and ignore the other 1%. The way someone like myself or Laurie manages this set of compromises is by feedback from the users; if you start getting unhappy with the list, please contact me (or laurie: [[email protected]]). We know our lists are working well when nobody notices we exist; our best admin work is done when there's nothing to do, and what little we feel we need to get involved in gets done privately so the list doesn't realize we're tweaking. And frankly, one of the joys of this list is it never seems to need tweaking. And thanks to all of you for making that happen! I thought now was a good time to say this, and to talk a bit about the "side discussion" issue, because it's one of the things most likely to create problems -- and I'd like to make sure that doesn't happen, so it seemed like a perfect time to encourage everyone to think about the compromises we all make in sharing this resource; this is one of those potential hot-buttons where problems can occur when people forget that there is more than one view of what's acceptable here... chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech [[email protected]] -- http://chuqui.typepad.com/ Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject. |
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| >[SBB] Henry Coe (From: michael mammoser <[[email protected]]>) | |
| >Re: [SBB] Henry Coe (From: "Garth Harwood" <[[email protected]]>) |