Greetings Economists, On Sep 16, 2007, at 6:29 PM, sartesian wrote:
Where are the outbursts of anger in the discussion? Or rather, mis-directed outbursts?
Doyle; He says he doesn't need any slack cut for him. Personally I didn't see you get angry. In an over all sense Michael seems to maintain the list well enough. He asks for people to respond to his demands and that seems to work. Aside from that you, me, and everyone here doesn't do much who writes in. Some people send in essays true, but those are personal papers to which no one else is contributing in an organized way and therefore can not meet what I think collaborative standards might demand. I can't see getting worked up about the arbitrariness of the list. For example; Mr X writes; Let's take care that the default position on pen-l is not dead silence as well. Doyle' This seems to me be wrong technically about speaking up. In a more collaborative medium like Wikipedia there is a history of work on the article that people engage in. Here how are people who agree or disagree going to be heard if the sheer volume goes up? Does an increase in lurker participation really add to the content value? I don't think so, because the medium is not collaborative, and that is ok. It does what it does because someone imposes an arbitrary order. It functions under a regime that is not capable of engaging huge numbers of people at once. 500 people writing every day on many subjects is impossible to keep up with. Re-use of knowledge, honing content with many hands, requires addressing just this big silence issue. That is how many people get engaged in the process. That is how lurking is converted from sitting in a staff meeting wishing things would end with the dull drone of know it all's so one can get back to work. It can't be done by simply upping the volume. That is just anarchy. The lurking issue is about the model of knowledge production itself, not how this or any other email list gets done. It is fundamentally wrong to ask of email lists to be a collaborative medium that addresses full participation by large numbers of people. The content is too spread out in too unorganized a way, with no regard to many issues of agreement, usefulness, knowability, and so on. I think Michael does a good job with a medium that cannot do collaborative work well. Doyle
