Re: [UC] Re: We Are All Human and make Mistakes

[MLamond]

In a message dated 1/12/05 6:45:01 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

Hello
Thanks for this history.
Its a reminder that insults are
not needed to make a point :)
-Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Wilma de Soto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Jan 11, 2005 8:49 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: PFSNI listserv <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
� � UnivCity listserv <UnivCity@list.purple.com>
Subject: [UC] Re: We Are All Human and make Mistakes

<<...First of all ten years and a bit more ago, I was Co-Chair of the Spruce Hill
Membership during the time when Patrick Starr was SHCA's President....

...we began a Spruce Hill E-mail list where primarily Officers of the Board
of Spruce Hill and others in the organization who had e-mail and Internet
access, (which was not as plentiful in 1994 as it is now.) could tend to
community business.....

Thereafter, I am not quite sure how the UC List came metamorphosed from the
SHCA e-mail list except that Sharrieff Ali, reported earlier that SHCA
formed an Internet Committee and Jeff Abramson (member of said committee)
sponsored the listserv and put it on purple.com.....>>

I, too, enjoyed Wilma's helpful and polite post.  I was an officer of SHCA while Patrick was president, and I can explain how the listserv went from a Spruce Hill list to a communication tool for all of University City: 

Patrick and the SHCA were very involved with the ad-hoc University City Promotions Group which sponsored the annual "University City Saturday:  A Community Open House."  This event brought together people from community associations and special interest groups all over University City, and we began to see that it was good for everyone if the groups all knew one another and worked together.  From that realization came the founding of the University City Community Council, and Patrick was an early contributor to that group.  Naturally, the UCCC also realized that it would be good to have an email system for quickly "spreading the word" around the neighborhood, and Patrick offered to ask Jeff to expand the list he was organizing so that instead of it being the "Spruce Hill listserv," it would be the "University City listserv."  Jeff did so.

Today, listservs are invaluable and allow quick & easy neighborhood communication in ways our community-organizing predecessors never even dreamed of.  But, it only works if people are willing to be members of the list.  And when our list degenerates into insults, insider jokes and ramblings into topics so far removed from life in the neighborhood, people unsubscribe, so the list becomes ineffective.  Not only that, but people (including, ironically, the former SHCA VP during Patrick's term) campaign to get others to unsubscribe, and they tell newcomers not to join.  Membership does not grow.  The purpose for which the list was founded - communication about topics of general interest in University City - is lost.

Alas, we have too many would-be shock jocks in our neighborhood, and they frequently hijack the list.  Wilma, thanks for reminding us, oh so civilly, what the list was all about.

Melani Lamond