Hi Eryk! If I remember correctly, there have been many different forms of list software; majordomo was another one that was at one time associated with early philosophy lists. Newsgroups often served a similar purpose, especially ones that were topic-oriented. There were almost always FAQs associated with them. Even the RFC functioned at times as discussion platforms. On the MOOs etc. there were the same. The advantage of newsgroups, as with the various list architectures, is that there are archives; although they're rarely used, they provide historical documentation which can be valuable.
I'm not sure what biases a list inherits; at least in my decades of moderating, they seem more like language/discussion/presentation pools which are a form of commons. Early on there was a great deal of trolling (and the resulting banning), which could get ugly and blow up quickly, but that's disappeared at least on every list I'm on. I think better targets came along as well as more informed subscribers, etc. A final note, it seems to me that when a list is taken somewhere by the moderators, it tends to weaken because control has set in. For me, the best lists in the sense of use and affect are those that are the production of community, in a sense headless. But that's just my take on it of course. I can say the two lists I've moderated for over a quarter century now are still functioning, although one with very little posting now. That one, Cybermind, has had to deal with issues any small community deals with - people dying leaving town, few new people coming in. Which is maybe how it should be; I keep thinking of the Canadian show, Still Standing, by Jonny Harris, who has gone from small Canadian town to small Canadian town, across the country, documenting the resilience of community. Best, Alan On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 11:05 AM Eryk Salvaggio via NetBehaviour < [email protected]> wrote: > I sent this a few days ago in response to netbehavior discussion on why > some post and others don’t, and where responsibility for a community > rests. It seems to have been hooked in a spam filter of some sort, so I’m > sending it through again. > > I suspect the “consumer vs producer” dichotomy is being a bit harsh. I > don’t post, but because it feels interruptive of other conversations, > including list-silence. I was raised on the epistolary flow of the mailing > list, but now that knowledge feels elusive. I don’t know the “rules,” that > is, the social protocols rather than any moderator’s restrictions or > allowances. > > It may be “just me,” but posting — when *I* post — feels performed rather > than generous. Again, this is my feeling about the act — it never crosses > my mind that anyone else who posts is performing. I always see it as > generous. > > Maybe it’s useful to frame this as an intellectual exercise: “what was the > Listserv?” — though I hate to suggest that the Listserv is dead. To do some > armchair anthropology: the Listserv (a registered trademark, though widely > abused, nevertheless capitalized by autocorrect) actually dates to the > 1970s, where it was manually assembled and distributed. With the Web came > automation. One of the earliest of these was a mailing list dedicated to > announcements of internet failures. (That list, LINKFAIL, occasionally > produced so much traffic as to exacerbate any failures it attempted to > report). Seems to resonate now as the biggest conversation I’ve seen here > has been around the lack of conversation. > > I’m typing this while visiting my parents on my first post-vaccination > journey in the United States, so I’m in the same bedroom where I was > writing to (haranguing?) quite a few Listservs as a teenager in the late > 1990’s. I admittedly sharpened a disruptive and performance-based method of > online interaction with mailing lists back then. > > That has me thinking about the organization of mailing lists and > responses: “threads,” and how the use on mailing lists differs from > Twitter. Listserv threading, emerging from the academic communities of > USENET and the like, follows the structure of publication, or debates. Just > like academia, the design seems to encourage responses ranging from > encouragement and elucidation to abuse and dismissal. Debates get us to a > particular form of ”reason,” and in other communities this form of > discussion mirrors all kinds of toxic academic formalizations of > communication, notably imposter syndrome: the sense that your contribution > to a space has to be “earned.” > > On the other hand, the thread is always collaborative: it’s created by > response, a feedback loop of interaction. A post without response > disappears. A post with a reply lives until it doesn’t. The “thread” runs > through the content and form, tying it together until it “runs out of > steam” or gets “derailed.” (Tellingly the metaphors for the conversation > move from the relational yarn-weaving threads of Ada Lovelace to the brutal > industrial-era metaphor of a train either crashing or losing energy: we > never say that the thread has been sewn, that the fabric has been patched > or the quilt completed, because conversation is always in a possible state > of continuing, never finished unless it fails.) > > On Twitter, the “thread” is a mechanism designed for the opposite of > feedback. You thread a series of linked posts, forming an uninterrupted > soliloquy. Nobody has to interact before you form and post the next > thought. Less salon, more soapbox. (Though notably I write this bit seven > paragraphs in). > > Being a “passive consumer” to these shared spaces has come to feel more > generous to me than being an active contributor. But I suspect that is just > Twitter poisoning. My relationship to the Twitter soliloquy, with its > torrent of promotion and opinion and argument, has tainted the act of > sharing my own art and ideas here with an association with likes, clicks > and other affordances of today’s digital validation. It’s a system which > tends to encourage imposter syndrome through design: participation demands > the assertion of “a contribution,” but what is a contribution but the > sharing of an idea — a train sent from the station to see if it can sew a > quilt? > > But a Listserv can also be a respite from the “follow”, a space to > encounter and be encountered rather than an extension of our selves. I > suspect it’s helpful for us all to confirm that for ourselves from time to > time: the mailing list is created collaboratively, it requires response and > feedback to survive, and it’s up to us to encourage overcoming the legacy > of its design by balancing hard against the biases it inherits. > > -e. > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour > -- *=====================================================* *directory http://www.alansondheim.org <http://www.alansondheim.org> tel 718-813-3285**email sondheim ut panix.com <http://panix.com>, sondheim ut gmail.com <http://gmail.com>* *=====================================================*
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