Liz,
I'm in agreement with Walt, having a mix of new and experienced users is essential.
If the community isn't diverse, questions may not get answered and problems
may not get solved.
Believe it or not, I've belonged to listservs with more traffic than this. The reason
I ended up unsubscribing had more to do with the kind of messages than the
volume. The subjects of most of the email just didn't pertain to me. I wonder if
this issue isn't along the lines of "junk mail", that is, it's only junk mail
if it isn't interesting to you.
I'm a new ebase user, so nearly every topic is of interest to me. I want to know how
other people are using the program and the kind of problems they are having.
Like Walt, I use my email program to filter messages into a separate folder. I look
through the subject lines, if they are interesting I read them, if not, I
delete them. If I don't have time, I look at the messages when I do.
Perhaps listserve subscription is cyclical in nature. People stay on as long as they
get something they need. They drop off when it is no longer of value.
Given the volume of this list, I'd have to guess that a fair number of people are
getting something of value. I'm not sure attempting to decrease traffic is
necessarily a beneficial outcome.
Rainie Jueschke, CFRE
Development Director
South Carolina Fair Share
Columbia, SC
Liz Gans wrote:
> Thanks, Barry, for your good advice. In fact, our best approach might be to
> do just as you say: help subscribers learn how to set digests, filter their
> email, and search their own archives.
>
> To figure out how to solve the problem, we'd like to find out from the ebase
> support community how it wants to organize itself--and we'll do our best to
> make it happen.
>
> 1. Are there communities of interest that you'd like to belong to, as
> opposed to the one large community we have right now? When we had two lists
> (newbies and support) we found that there was little distinction in the type
> of questions posted to each. They really didn't function as distinct
> communities of interest.
>
> 2. What do you think of using an web-based forum (such as one Ted Fickes
> just suggested outside the listserv, www.phorum.org)? Web-conferencing is
> organized by topic and is searchable. But you would have to get on a website
> every time you have a question (though you can set it to email to you the
> posts to a given thread of discussion).
>
> 3. Other ideas and preferences?
>
> The ebase team will be discussing different solutions next Tuesday, and we
> would like to be guided by what you all want. So please let us know!
>
> Liz
>
> ----------------
> Liz Gans
> Director, ebase Community Support
> TechRocks
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ----------------
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ashton Computing & Mgt Svcs [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, March 16, 2001 8:40 AM
> To: TechRocks Support
> Subject: [support] Overwhelming Support List
>
> A number of folks appear to be bailing from this list in sheer despair at
> the volume of mail that's been coming through. I've seen this happen on a
> number of lists over some years on the internet. There are better ways of
> handling it.
>
> The way I like is to have lots of disk space, and just let the support mail
> pile up in a folder of its own. Occasionally I'll read it all for a few
> days, to get a feeling for what sorts of problems people are running into,
> but then I get overwhelmed and just let it slide.
>
> That being said, when I have a problem, the first thing I do is a text
> search through the Support mailbox. Frequently, I remember seeing
> something like my problem show up before, and just have to find the
> discussion.
>
> Another way is to go to the web site listed at the bottom of every Support
> email, and set your preference to "no mail." You remain affiliated, but
> stop getting mail. You can post and view mail through the web site and
> keep it all off of your home machine. Currently there is an archive there
> back to 12/31/2000--I don't know if there's a 3-month cutoff or if that's
> just a starting point.
>
> Barry Newton
> Greater Sandy Spring Green Space
>
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