----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 10:52 PM
Subject: More than birds on the list...
(was Re: [SBB] Henry Coe
On May 12, 2006, at 4:19 PM, Garth Harwood wrote:
Michael's inclusion of a few butterfly
sightings may be a good precedent for the list, at least for this season.
Although we surely don't want to set a precedent of wandering very far
off-topic (this list's tight birding focus being what makes it so
valuable), nonetheless, I'm sure many of us enjoy spotting butterflies and
dragonflies through our optics as well.
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
Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh
nervously and change the subject.