Steve Eskow wrote: >The "listserv" is a mode of dialog that fits the genius of the online >environment, and thus there are thousands of them, and they will continue to >flourish and multiply. > > Listservs are self limiting because in propagation, they split the attention of people. If all listservs are equal - and they are not, because our judgement brings weight which makes them unequal - and a person subscribes to one listserv, then they spend their time 'there'. Introduce another listserv, the attention would be split 2 ways. 3 listservs, 3 ways. And so on.
As someone subscribed to about 1000 RSS feeds, Google alerts and about 100 email lists, I find listservs to be very limited in that I only focus on a few. One of these lists is the DDN list (obviously). But when I spend time on the DDN, I'm not spending it on the WSIS Civil Society lists, or the Latin American ICT lists, or what have you. Infoglut. I am now up to about 4000 emails a day, with about 400 SPAM messages that sneak through filters and Mozilla. Content Management Systems and Wikis are actually superior to listservs in many regards. The allow online discussion, people can participate as needed, they are indexable by search engines (nowadays many listservs are, so it's hardly an advantage), threads can fall under multiple contexts without being replicated in cyberspace... you don't have to tell people when you are out of the office every message, you can use HTML or an equivalent if you so desire, and it's possible to even setup posting by email for those who wait for the bleeding edge to coagulate. Listservs are best for immediate discussion. But they really suck for a lot of other things when compared to the newer online tools available. I'm actually trimming out listservs now, not because they lack value but because I have to prioritize my time. The new DigitalDivide website is a definite step in the right direction. It's bridging a cultural divide between email, RSS and content management systems in a good way. There's a few things I have ideas on, like creating a 'Digital Divide weblog' off of the list which handles each new topic as an entry, and anything with 'Re:' in it as a response to the entry. Why is that important? One of the main problem of listservs is that people have to know about them. Another aspect is that someone who is busy may not participate on the list, but they might post a comment to a weblog entry. Accessibility. -- Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.worldchanging.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
