I wouldn't assume thst posts which don't generate feedback are meaningless or getting ignored. It could be just as easily reflect a consensus of agreement by the group.
On Tue, Dec 24, 2024, 12:03 PM Anthony Boynton via groups.io <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank you John, Dennis, Mark, Jim, Dennis, Erik, Tom, Michael, Karen, and > Hari. > > I think the best sign of the slow revival of this list is the growth of > the moderators' group itself. Louis worried about who to pass the torch to, > but Les was the only one of his candidates who picked up the ball. Since > then others came on board. Besides myself, Mark Baugher, David Walters, > Mark Lause, Michael Meeropol, and Hari Kumar. Les recruited most of the > moderators. For a brief moment, Marv Gandall joined us. > > Besides our group's self creation and the list's survival, there are two > other modest accomplishments. > > We have improved the tone of the discussion, but as Tom and Karen pointed > out, it can still be off-putting. This is not a new problem. Louis P. > himself could be one of the worst offenders and those old habits of rock em > sock em debate have persisted while the world changed. I doubt that we will > ever completely overcome this, but now we have a group of moderators who > are paying attention and working to keep offenders on a tight leash. We > don't normally toss people off the list, but the one's who we moderate > (i.e.. put their posts in a que for approval before approving them for > publication) sometimes leave the list. > > We have also successfully started and continued the online forum series. > Although the forums have been of uneven quality, most of them are as good > or better than similar events held by Haymarket or Why Marx. And we are > getting better at what we are doing. This effort takes a lot of work, and > we could still use more help. > > We are about to announce the next forum which will be about Syria on > January 25th. And we are about to announce a series of other forums to be > held later this year. > > The forums have several goals: to educate and inform, to encourage > discussion at the forums and on the list, to enliven list members and > encourage members who do not usually post to participate in discussion, and > to attract new people to the list. So far, the connection between the > forums and the members of the list has been their weakest point. We have > mostly attracted audiences of people who are not list members, but a small > number of those people have become list members. > > If you look at the names of the Marxmail members, you can get some idea of > the gender demographics of the list. I would say that women probably make > up 10 to 20 percent of the membership, but far less than 10% of the posts > are from women. In fact, Karen's contribution to this thread is the only > post by a woman that I could find in the last ten days. Its much harder to > guess at other list demographic issues but clearly list members are mostly > older, white, male, radicals in the United States. > > I would be great if a woman would join the moderators' group. We have > tried to recruit women to the group without success. > > I think the main problem is the overall demographic structure of the list. > To change that, we have to attract more people, younger people, and more > diverse people. It would help is we could publish the list in languages > besides English, but at present we are far from having the resources to do > that. For now, our only tool for attracting new people is the series of > forums. > > Again, thank you all for your comments. > > Anthony > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#34253): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/34253 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/110264786/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
