This list traffic stays pretty steady. And the number of members stay pretty
steady too.
From: Daniel White
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 3:37 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
We are really putting the cart waaaayyyy before the horse here huh? Changing
to the new association management platform was a necessity and there is a lot
of additional functionality that forums will enable for the WISPA committees as
an example.
I'm an anti-forum guy myself... but when it was presented to the Board and all
of the reasoning behind it, it sounded like a good idea to me. I don't recall
all the reasoning (its been at least a month since we had the discussion) but
at least let WISPA finish rolling it out before we make any decisions.
A lot of the value of WISPA and Animal Farm years ago was the member lists...
but you can look at the traffic now vs. 5 years ago and make conclusions
yourself on where the traffic has gone. WISPs have not stopped networking...
just not doing it on e-mail lists as much anymore.
I view this as a good thing... organizations like WISPA have to keep defining
their value beyond access to a mailing list. This WISPA board so far as worked
great together and we have a pretty good vision on that front.
And has already been said... we will always have AFMUG
Daniel White
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations
phone: +1 (702) 470-2766
direct: +1 (702) 470-2770
Ken Hohhof wrote on 1/7/20 09:10:
Given that many (in fact most) WISPs are very small businesses, there has
always been a tendency in WISPA from the early days not to view ourselves as
serious businesses, but more of a hobby, side gig, or social network. That’s
also a view popular in some “new economy” startups.
That’s fine, if you never intend to grow really big or sell your business or
quit your day job. Or hire more than a handful of employees, and offer them
big company benefits and career tracks.
I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion, but if you’re serious about your
business, at some point you need more than a cellphone and Facebook. (You also
need friends that aren’t work friends.) You discover there are reasons
established businesses do things a certain way other than they’re old and
stodgy.
As far as Facebook, I use it to communicate with customers, but I don’t
really like it. It only reaches maybe 10% of them (honestly almost all moms).
They also assume that’s our preferred method of communicating back to us, while
we view it as more of a blog and announcement system. The rest of the
customers think it makes us look unprofessional because we are using a social
networking platform they have no interest in joining to announce things like
outages and planned maintenance. Pissed off customer asks why we didn’t notify
customers we were going to replace a tower router or AP, and we say that we
posted to our Facebook page, and that just makes them more pissed off. I have
to agree, we need something more businesslike and professional, but Twitter or
Slack or whatever isn’t the answer. We probably need to be posting to our own
website, or let customers subscribe to an email or text message announcement
list. Email and texts are near universal with our customers, voice calls not
so good because people ignore voicemails, none of the social media platforms
have significant penetration. Social media doesn’t reach the majority of our
customers, despite what you might think from the media. Like with all the
tweets from Trump, you’d think most people are on Twitter, actually that’s not
even remotely true. We hear about it because Twitter is like a press release,
the media picks up stories and that’s how regular people hear about it. OK,
maybe the diehard Kardashian and Taylor Swift and Beyonce fans follow them on
Twitter. If I really thought we could get all our customers to install the
Twitter app and follow us, I would use that to announce outages and stuff. But
I really expect customers would tell me I’m a moron if I told them that plan.
The two things they accept as mainstream are emails and text messages. Those
also have the advantage of immediacy. You see it right away, and if you need
to reply, you can do that right away also.
WISPA as an organization also needs to decide how it views itself. Are we a
social network for WISP owners and employees? Or a professional organization
that should operate like a business?
I would resist the view that Facebook is stealing away our forum traffic.
People are going to network. Social networking is good for that, whether it’s
Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s not necessarily bad if some “non mission critical”
traffic goes elsewhere. After all, another complaint that has come up in the
past has been too much email traffic on the lists. Some people unsubscribe
because evidently it’s too much trouble to hit delete or create message rules
to sort messages into folders. So maybe ask, is the traffic moving to social
media traffic that needs to be on a WISPA managed platform? Is WISPA falling
down on its job to provide essential services to members, and that’s why people
are turning to sites like Facebook? If the answer is yes, then maybe a change
is needed. But only with an understanding of the goals and the problem we are
trying to fix.
People are social and are going to use social media no matter what, and it’s
not necessarily a bad thing.
From: AF mailto:[email protected] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 9:29 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group mailto:[email protected]
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
I hate all things FB unless I am working as a contractor building stuff for
them. Then I love FB.
From: Mathew Howard
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 8:21 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
Facebook groups are not forums...
As much as I dislike forums, I must admit, I dislike facebook groups much
more (although in a different way)
On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 9:07 AM Mike Hammett <[email protected]> wrote:
"Would a forum have done as well?"
If you define Facebook groups as a forum, the answer is yes. The Facebook
groups and pages did respond well to the issue. The difference between AFMUG
and the others is that Forrest's expertise in the matter was on AFMUG.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
Midwest Internet Exchange
The Brothers WISP
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Ken Hohhof" <[email protected]>
To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 8:41:27 AM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
IMHO, projects should have goals, otherwise they are change for change sake.
One needs to ask, what problem does this solve?
It is popular to categorize people as either conservative or progressive,
which I think is false. Most people are both. They want to fix what’s broke,
and keep what works.
So what’s broke, how does this change fix it, and are any babies being
thrown out with the bathwater?
I see a lot of vendor forums. Some work, many don’t. The key seems to be
that a vendor forum needs the vendor to have moderators constantly monitoring
the forum posts and recruiting internal resources to respond. Unless you just
want it to serve a social function, rather than being transactional, like
announcements or requests for assistance. Unmoderated vendor forums tend to
become a space for bloviation and for noobs to foolishly ask for help not
realizing nobody will respond.
Look how well this list responded to the GPS problem when the GLONASS
rollover occurred. Would a forum have done as well?
Now it’s possible this is much fuss over nothing. Maybe what WISPA is
contemplating is a mere technical change that will allow the existing
transactional email format to continue, while also providing a convenient
archive for the people who visit only occasionally or when they are researching
something, maybe with cool search features. But I still ask, what problem is
being solved?
There has been a long running discussion at WISPA that pretty much consists
of “I like lists” vs “I like forums”. It seems like either somebody feels it’s
time for the forum likers to have a turn, or else the new WISPA software has a
forum feature that somebody wants to use. But decision making without goals is
basically “listening to your gut”. My gut wants a fish taco.
From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Josh Baird
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 7:59 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
It doesn't seem like members@ is being used much anyways. It's so low
traffic, that I thought I got removed for some reason.
At least we still have AFMUG, amirite?
On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 8:45 AM Dennis Burgess via AF <[email protected]>
wrote:
Yep. While I really thing that the WISPA mailing lists are important,
moving it to a forum and discontinuing mailing list would be a bad idea for
WISPA.
Dennis Burgess, Mikrotik Certified Trainer
MTCNA, MTCRE, MTCWE, MTCTCE, MTCINE, MTCSE, HE IPv6 Sage, Cambium ePMP
Certified
Author of "Learn RouterOS- Second Edition”
Link Technologies, Inc -- Mikrotik & WISP Support Services
Office: 314-735-0270 Website: http://www.linktechs.net
Create Wireless Coverage’s with www.towercoverage.com
From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mike Hammett
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 7:36 AM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
When a couple non-WISPA FB groups became popular, WISPA mailing list
traffic plummeted.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
Midwest Internet Exchange
The Brothers WISP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Sean Heskett" <[email protected]>
To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 6, 2020 11:54:41 PM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
I don’t use the book of face so I’m unfamiliar.
I think wispa should offer every opportunity for us to communicate and
not limit it to just forums. Forums are get for knowledge base/tech support
type stuff because you have a threaded searchable archive. But it’s a
repository of knowledge, not a communications platform for interactive daily
stuff. I check wispa, animal farm and NANOG email lists multiple times a day.
Cambium went to forums which makes sense for a solutions provider so that they
have the searchable database, but I go there maybe monthly to check for new
software or known issues. But I’m not very active in their community, mostly
because I don’t have time to also go login and check a forum. Email is
constantly flowing my way and I interact with it all throughout the day.
One way to find out I guess is to gather some data. Find out how many
messages are currently being sent and then look at the data after it’s forums
only. My money is on a steep decline in engagement...I know personally I won’t
be on there. Not because I don’t want to be there, but it’s simply I don’t
have the time to add yet another thing to go log into and check to my daily
life.
2 cents
-Sean
You can catch me on afmug (animal farm) or nanog
On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 10:21 PM Daniel White <[email protected]> wrote:
Yes it is going away to a forum. Personally not a fan myself but
demand seems to be more for forums than the mailing lists. Will also make some
of the committee work that happens easier so I have been told.
Most of the day to day conversation happens on Facebook anymore... was
the only reason I ever signed up. Not sure what was so wrong about e-mail :-)
Daniel White
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Operations
phone: +1 (702) 470-2766
direct: +1 (702) 470-2770
Ken Hohhof wrote on 1/6/20 19:10:
You mean the main members list? Where did you hear it was going away?
From: AF mailto:[email protected] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: Monday, January 6, 2020 7:55 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [AFMUG] WISPA email list
I thought the WISPA email list was going to be shut off. But just
now I got an email. Like to delete my folder once it is defunct.
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