[Air-L] More on the change

[Gilbert B. Rodman]

Hi, all --

Thanks to Charles for providing the extra context, which is very
helpful.  Since he says the Exec is looking for input from the list as a
whole, here's my small contribution.

Seems to me that either setup is inconvenient for someone: the new
system places a burden (however small) on people who want to keep an
ongoing conversation onlist, the old system places a burden (however
small) on people who want to reply offlist to messages that appeared
onlist.  Neither of these burdens is exactly outrageous -- we're not
talking about poll taxes or mandatory 30-day waiting periods here -- but
they're still likely to produce very different types of list activity.

The new system makes people who want to keep an open dialogue going do a
small amount of extra work, while it protects people who aren't actually
trying to contribute to a public conversation from doing so
accidentally.  The old system makes people who wanted to continue onlist
conversations privately do a small amount of extra work, while it allows
people who want to have a public conversation to do so easily.

At the risk of echoing Marj's comments, the new system seems like an
ideal choice if we assume that AIR-L is primarily an
announcement-centered list for CFPs, job postings, and such.  The tiny
bit of extra friction involved in keeping a conversation going onlist
keeps the air(-l) relatively clear so that the those announcements can
happen.  If, however, we assume that AIR-L is supposed to be a "place"
where internet researchers can converse with one another in an open
forum, then the old system is better -- especially since the list hasn't
exactly been flooded with embarrassing and/or career-killing personal
messages -- since it offloads that tiny bit of extra friction onto
people who aren't actually trying to keep that public conversation going
anyway.

Personally, I favor the old system.  As long as we're hoping that AIR-L
is for open dialogue as much as (if not more than) it is for
announcements, it seems to me that the bias -- however small it might
be, either way -- should run in favor of the people who're doing the
most work to keep that conversation going.  Put a slightly different
way, the "accidents" in the new system hurt that open dialogue, since
those accidents involve would-be posters forgetting to use "reply-all"
and thus sliding into private conversations.  And that seems like a much
steeper price to pay than the occasional personal message slipping
through every few months.


cheers
gil


PS:  One additional bit of context for my remarks above.  Since 1996,
I've managed a public listserv that currently has 2250 members and
averages roughly 100 posts every month.  It's always been set up so that
replies go to the whole list.  We get a handful of accidental personal
messages every year ... and I suspect I could count on the fingers of
one hand the number of those that were scandalous enough to raise
anyone's eyebrows.  When we've had serious scandal/trouble -- and it's
been a while (he said, tempting fate recklessly) -- it's almost always
come from people who knew quite well that they were posting to the whole
list.  Obviously, different lists have different purposes, involve
different communities, and produce different cultures of their own. 
But, in my experience anyway, the biggest threat to lively onlist
dialogue comes from spam and flames, not from the occasional "I am very
interested in your job/conference/book-project" message that
accidentally slips through.