Hi Shelly,
Thank you for your reply.
> It is good to know that Eddy Young is still interested in
> following the
mailing list threads even though he is living in the United Kingdom.
Regarding the concerns outlined, I remember SM sent an email about the
mailing list format. [1]
>
> [1] http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2015/12/4530.html
I was myself surprise that he was interested about the mailing list even
if I never saw him around here lately. He does however seems to be
active on the subreddit for 'mauritius'.
After reading through the above e-mail from the archive, it becomes
clear that subscribers know that their e-mail address will be seen
publicly since this is a public mailing list. Personally, I knew when
subscribing that my e-mail address would be exposed for the whole world
to see and made sure that I was ready for any spam. I ran through some
public mailing lists and saw that this was also the case.
Eddy Young argued that discussions were too formal and the entire setup
very ritual. When I looked at other public mailing lists (e.g
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/html-tidy/2015JulSep/0021.html), I
noticed it was also the case for them. Is it actually bad to have formal
conversations in an orderly manner?
As I read through what Eddy wrote, he was basically advising to turn the
mailing list into some sort of subreddit where there was "privacy",
informal chats and a large array of topics. Honestly, all this will
defeat the purpose of this mailing list. As per my understanding, this
mailing list helps address some of the issues faced by Mauritian
internet users. There are TOO MANY private communities (some of which I
am part of) which happen to "rant" a lot about problems in Mauritius but
sadly only members in these communities benefit from their own ranting
as no-one else sees it. Instead when you report a problem to a service
provider and shows in clear view how the problem is being tackled by the
service provider from day one, that is when changes happen.
Too often I see people or a group of people rattling (on places like
facebook, twitter, reddit) about changes they'd want but sadly it ends
there. It is easy to tell someone you've complained about a bad service
when no actual evidence is presence.
1) privacy - hiding behind an identity that cannot be confirmed
immediately or an unreliable point of contact is obviously pointless
2) informal chats - formal conversations are proven to be more reliable
and straight to the point. informal conversations tend to go in every
direction since the participants have more freedom. Browsing through
informal conversations can be an annoyance for someone who is not a
participant to these conversations (i.e browsing through a group chat
on facebook you are not part of). Formal conversations benefit from a
core structure that is easier to read through and understand
immediately. It might be more time-consuming to setup but offers more
benefits and less chance of spreading rumors, for example.
3) large array of topics - frankly, I don't know how this will be
beneficial as subscribers already have the freedom to choose the
topics they want to discuss about and knowledge level is
automatically adjusted based on the course of the discussion. If a
discussion becomes too technical for example, participants are
invited to point it out and make necessary amendments.
My above opinion joins strongly with the idea that it helps keep a level
of standard and maturity for this mailing list. If I was to browse
through a mailing list where I could not confirm the identity of the
participants straightaway, where the conversations were hard to follow
due to the informal format and where the topics were TOO varied, I would
have some trouble taking the mailing list seriously :)
I do understand that Eddy proposed these solutions to remedy to his
concern about "low participation". While browsing through the archives,
I found this[1]. This mailing list is obviously highly dependent on some
regulars. Might these regulars go dormant, so will the mailing list and
this is the same for some mailing lists I've come across.
Another reading material from the archive[2] (same thread as [1]) which
outlines well the barriers to participation.
My final keynote, there will always be the trade off between the level
of participation and quality of participation.
Regards, Mike
1.
http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2016/01/4913.html
2.
http://lists.elandnews.com/archive/mauritius/internet-users/2016/01/4957.html
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Received on Tue Feb 23 2016 - 22:47:28 PST