From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu May 09 2002 - 01:06:02 MDT
On Wed, 8 May 2002, spike66 wrote:
> Gene, I read your post thrice and still haven't a clue what you are
> saying. spike
What he is saying is that he is tired of doing most of the work
maintaining the transhumantech mailing list.
I suppose its a catch-22 -- you can develop a really condensed
high info-content to volume list like the THT, but to make it
relatively consistent you have to have a single editor. Or
you can have a totally unedited/unmoderated list like the ExI
list and have to deal with distilling the really useful content
from the traffic streaming by ones door. I know of people who
have dropped off the ExI list due to the high N/S ratio.
The advantage of the THT and Nanogirl posts is that some of
us are able to really focus our attention on the distilled
information content -- though even that is too much information
to process for those of us who spend a very large fraction of
our time processing information.
For recent THT/Nanogirl newletters I read 1/5 to 1/10 of the
pointed to posts. I'm relatively certain that ratio is moderately
higher than my reading of ExI list posts.
As I've advised Gene before -- the trick is to enroll distributed
editors (or automated agents) for the THT list. Sabine seems to
be contributing on a regular basis. As a member of the board
of the American Aging Association, I can only state that the
problem of managing newsletters and/or journals does not
disappear at a higher organizational level. It takes people
stepping up to the plate who are committed to doing the work
in the trenches. That is required to make a venture successful.
However those efforts have to be rewarded in some fashion
otherwise the people involved will put their efforts elsewhere
and the content will degrade or disappear. I can cite a clear
example of this in the field of aging over the last couple of
years.
So people who really like the THT/Nanogirl newsletters may
want to think about "How do I acknowledge this service?".
Acknowledgements can range from quarterly appreciation
cards to paypal donations. An alternative way of looking
at this is "How many movies/DVD rentals do you value the
information content of those lists at?". If you don't
want to make the effort in "time" (e.g. contributions to
the lists), it certainly seems reasonable to make the
contributions in $$$. Of course in an ideal world, the
contributions would be "ranked" in an open fashion so
people could evaluate how much others/self were contributing
to the pot. When the pot is overflowing (as the ExI list
is) all of the contributions get discounted. When the pot
is distilled with higher value contents, as the THT/Nanogirl
lists are, the contributions get elevated/supported.
Robert
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