I am in full agreement with Tom. When interacting with biology students and graduates, i have asked if they belong to the ECOLOG list for it is a good venue for job postings. Most young biologists have shaken their heads and told me that the number of jobs posted and "real" interactions, such as posters needing advice on project etc, is not worth the number of emails they have to delete from members that appear to need to soapbox so they can post any random opinion of theirs would be noticed and then try to open a discussion over it.
In my belief, we would have a larger membership if these individuals could contain themselves or those that want to dicuss their random opinions could have their own "room" or such to discuss it in. I honestly am tired of a certain few here that continually do this at the expense of all other members and their inboxes who may just not care what your opinion on everything is. Linda -------- Original message -------- From: "Thomas J. Givnish" <[email protected]> Date: 05/28/2013 12:05 AM (GMT-06:00) To: [email protected] Subject: [ECOLOG-L] two suggestions re inundation by opinion pieces Gentlepeople – I would like to offer two suggestions. First, we each restrict our commentary to topics about which we, as individuals, are experts. Second, each individual should restrict the number of commentaries offered per month to the number of times that individual's publications were cited during all of last year, according to ISI. Generally, ECOLOG-L is consulted by grad students and post-docs looking for jobs and informed advice about field techniques, analytical approaches, and job hunting. ECOLOG-L serves those purposes well. But when a few individuals repeatedly offer their opinions – which are frequently ill-informed – it clogs up thousands of email boxes across the country, spreads misinformation, and raises the hackles of people who know better and feel compelled to rebut the errors. My two proposals, if self-policed, would eliminate all these problems and insure that a larger share of the opinion traffic is solidly based. Everyone is entitled to free speech, but if in a given month your opinion comments exceed ALL of your field-wide citations from last year, perhaps it's time to think about whether large numbers of folks want to hear what you have to say, when you want to say it, as frequently as you would like to say it. Cheers, Tom Thomas J. Givnish Henry Allan Gleason Professor of Botany University of Wisconsin [email protected] http://botany.wisc.edu/givnish/Givnish/Welcome.html
