[Air-l] where does the term "lurking" come from

[Bonnie Nardi]

Thanks Barry. That's the point I was making in a previous post -- 
listservs, blogs, and so on are not communities but sets of diverse 
participants with thin relations -- important and vibrant relations, 
but not somewhere where one can meaningfully be said to "lurk."

--

Bonnie

On May 10, 2007, at 4:08 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:

> As one of the age-oldest (64) and email-oldest (since 1976) members of
> this list, I'd like to hazard a remembrance of where the term "lurking"
> comes. (Speaking of which, where is Blair Nonnecke, because that's what
> his diss was on?)
>
> In times past, the vision was a small, tightly-knit virtual community 
> all
> communing with each other. (Think of the WELL). In that vision,
> non-communicators were not playing by the rules of the game of the 
> active
> community. They were "lurking" while others were active community
> builders.
>
> Now, it's pretty clear that most people move among a bunch of partial
> communities, participating to various extent in some but not others. 
> They
> are readers in some/many, and more or less contributors to others. 
> This is
> true online as well as offline. So "lurking" only makes sense in things
> like a small workgroup or family circle, where all are expected to
> communicate. It makes no sense for this large list, or for others.
>
> PS: Thanks to James Whyte for his count of who participates. One slight
> methodological flaw. If there are 1800 on this list now, there probably
> are > 2000 who have been on at some point in the past 12 months in 
> which
> he counted participation. So the denominator is off. Hence the
> proportion of contributors is probably low by 10 to 20%. But still, 
> this
> is an impressively active list.
>
>  Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
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>
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Bonnie A. Nardi
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3440
(949) 824-6534
www.artifex.org/~bonnie/