On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:02:38AM -0700, John Sechrest wrote: (01)
> At some level this is a waste, since sending multiple copies of things
> that I don't read is extra bandwidth. However:
> a) I am able to read or not read at my leisure.
> b) I am able to apply my full unix search tool to the
> evaluation of the archive
> c) It is fast for me
> d) It is part of my regular flow of activies, just a slightly
> different focus. (02)
I agree with all of the above except for (a). If it were true, then
spam wouldn't be a problem. Signal-to-noise ratio strongly affects
the quality of forum discussion. Blogs alleviate that by allowing
self-selecting audiences. In other words, one person's noise is
another person's signal. It's nice to be allow people to filter
accordingly. Blogs facilitate this better than mailing lists. (03)
Side question: How many people on this list filter their e-mail? (04)
> I have yet to find an RSS reader solution that works well for me. (05)
Which ones have you tried? (06)
> One thing that seems to work well for me on news gathering is that
> I have a friend who is a news hound. And his tastes and mine are close
> enough. And he posts to a mailing list that I am on a steady stream
> of 4-6 messages a day of news items that he find interesting
> with a summary paragraph and a link.
>
> What is wrong with this? (07)
Nothing. (08)
> While it gives me a feed of high quality stuff. It does not let
> me engage in the conversation with the oringinal authors well.
> We do have a semi random conversation about things on the mailing list
> from time to time. But we don't engage in the public forum. (09)
I'm not espousing one over the other. The two complement each other.
You can engage in conversation about someone's blog entry on the
mailing list. The purple numbers are there to encourage that. (010)
> What do we gain from a blog?
>
> We gain a wider audience.
> But at the expense of focus of the local group. (011)
Again, I disagree. It's not one over the other. You can have your
cake and eat it, too. Don't take my word for it. Try it, and see if
you like it. (012)
> We gain local control over the bits
> But at the expense of organization. (013)
Curious claim. What organization are we losing? (014)
> And we also have other expenses like:
> a) changing the flow of how the information comes to people.
> b) Loosing the ability to sort/search/filter easily
> c) Changing how we can reference the material (015)
(a) -- yes. But change is not necessarily an expense. (016)
(b) -- maybe. But if there are compelling reasons to do both, then
you're just making a case for evolving the tools. Tools not being
good enough is not supposed to be an excuse for this group; it's
supposed to be motivation. (017)
(c) -- I don't understand. (018)
-Eugene (019)
--
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http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=tools-yak&i=20030714191255.GA13362@douge.blueoxen.net (021)
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