[Air-l] Lurking

[E. Sean Rintel]

Hi all,

I suppose it is poetic justice that I feel the need to de-lurk to add to 
the lurking thread...

Responding to Karim R. Lakhani's comments:

>I guess there are no costs involved in someone lurking on an e-mail list
>but what about the opportunity cost to the community by that person not
>participating.  Are they just free riding on the effort of the dedicated
>contributors?  Would their participation and information provision help
>the community members?

The implication here is that everyone on a list should be active, which 
seems neither probable, reasonable, or desireable.

Probable: Not everyone has an interest in every topic discussed on a list.

Reasonable: If A agrees with B entirely, why should A waste the list's time 
by simply posting in an "I agree". Not wasting bandwidth in that fashion 
has, indeed, been part of netiquette for a long time.

Desireable: Adding to both the above points, imagine the immense traffic 
involved with everyone on this list posting just once to every comment... 
it would be an expoentially disasterous situation of information overload. 
Furthermore, is it not somewhat draconian to expect everyone to voice an 
opinion to everything? Social life simply does not work like that. Not 
everyone offers an opinion about everything said at a party, and despite 
the difference in system-level structure an email list is not so different 
as to either negate deeply entrenched social norms, nor to impose new ones. 
If that was the case, I suspect people would stop using such systems.

This brings us to:

>What would happen if those 15% started their own private list?

Completely closed lists, like completely closed clubs, have limited 
shelf-lives. Without an influx of new members a list goes stale. Also, if 
an active 15% started a new list, the chance that every member would stay 
active would be very limited. In fact, perhaps 15% activity holds for 
almost any sized list - I doubt it's so clear cut, but judging by previous 
posts on group activity, it is more probable than, to take the opposite, 
85% activity. Furthermore, to revitalize a closed list new members are 
needed - even if only by invitation - and when that occurs, the notions of 
probability, reasonableness, and desireability are likely to apply once again.

Personally, I value being able to drop in and out of lists. And, I might 
add, when I'm new to a list I wait a fair while before posting for the 
first time, to get the flavor of the social group that I'm dealing with and 
also to make sure I have something to say. I've also noted that my list 
activity is cyclical. Sometimes I'm a list maniac, other times I prefer to 
a monitor. Why this is I'm not sure - a combination of personal 
circumstances and the topics on the list, I suppose. Actually, that brings 
me to a final point: I like to do other things than being an active 
list-member, but I like to know what's going on, so I monitor. I am part of 
the 'interested' community, so I don't feel that I am 'sponging from the 
list'. Opportunity cost, if that is going to be a notion used to calculate 
list-member value, has a problem in that it must involve the opportunity 
costs of the rest of my life.

Speaking of which, I must dash, and thus Until Anon,

Sean


--

E. Sean Rintel
Communication Department
University at Albany
State University of New York
Albany, NY, USA, 12222
http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/