Hi Ann,
Thank you for your email and pardon for the late reply.
I will play devil's advocate, here, and ask *why* a group mailing list is
> not a "proper" solution for this discussion? Even if a particular topic is
> of interest to only part of the community, isn't that nearly always true,
> for any given thread?
>
I feel the email as an old media, less appreciated than in the past. As you
said, it seems mostly used one-way, nowadays, at least in this ML.
So, I turn the question in: Why there are not so many discussions ongoing
in this list? Is it just because of lack of topics, or maybe because other
media replaced this list?
For example, on FB there's a group "Origami Help": honestly, when I search
for info about something specific, I feel that FB group will potentially
give more help, because of a wider audience, at least.
Writing an email takes much time to me than writing a FB post, attaching
images, directly mentioning people (tag) to alert them, and eventually
sharing my post on other groups, and so on ...
Also, FB is much more "visual" than a ML, and this is something quite
important to me.
> While I am the first to agree that the use of email (and the technology
> that people use to read and send it) has not evolved in a way that makes
> true discussion lists all that common any more, this is a pretty
> low-traffic list at the moment. It could, in my opinion, certainly
> withstand some regular discussion of something as important to the
> community as origami books
>
I understand, but actually I guess you over estimate the interest that the
topic "collecting" could have for the community.
Typical questions could be "does anyone know where I can find that book?"
or "could you please provide ISBN of the book shown here?"... so, not
actually discussions, not anything interesting for the community. that's
why I mentioned "flooding", because when you collect books, and want to
exchange info about collections, you end-up exchanging messages which are
not really discussions.
Furthermore, the rapidity of an answer on FB is much higher than any
ML. Yesterday
I was looking for a book, I had only a blur pic of the cover, I published
on Origami Help and had the ISBN from a group member in a few minutes.
If that level of list traffic were to be perceived as a "flood", or if this
> sort of thing is somehow no longer desired by the list membership, well,
> does anyone have a better idea for some sort of forum that would support
> such a discussion? Should we finally find another underlying solution for a
> home for the O-list community?
>
If this list has not much traffic, it is maybe because members have less
topics to share/discuss, and specifically it seems to me there are not much
people interested in collecting (I don't see any msg about that at all).
Personally, I do not think that a social-media page is really that great a
> way to have a discussion;
>
Yes, agree. Nevertheless, collectors are probably not discussing much.
Instead, they are mainly asking and they would reach a wide audience.
- Facebook pages require a user to "go" to a spot to make sure they see
> all the new material (and even then The Algorithm tries hard to only show
> you what it thinks you want) and then dig through nested comments to follow
> a conversation; and don't even go into what happens when users have blocked
> or unfollowed each other so that no one can actually see a whole thread;
>
The points here you mentioned I don't feel them so strong, personally.
I feel quite comfortable in FB groups, browsing FB threads...
> And few systems are going to make it easy for folks to discuss something
> for more than a few back-and-forth comments if they're coming in on a phone
> or similar device.
>
Another good point: mobile devices.
Many people do not use their laptop anymore, and actually when it comes to
mobile phones, discussing on FB is much more effective and easy than via
ML, in my experience.
I'm writing this email on mobile and actually... it's a mess.
It comes down to what specific sort of conversation does one want, and on
> what topic, and how do you want people to interact with it, what people,
> how often, etc.? I think if one can try to nail down some of those
> answers, then there's hope of creating a viable place for a particular
> online (sub)-community to exist.
>
Yes, that's why I thought to FB (fast and visual), for this topic.
Regards,
Lorenzo
--
Lorenzo Lucioni
Duesseldorf - DE
lorenzo.luci...@gmail.com
