Writing this before I read them all and before I forget, so I 
apologize in advance if it has already been said.

I have been a Yahoo list member (that moniker ought to date me well) 
for about 10 years now, and it has always struck me how inadequate 
the lists are at developing a community. Lists are great for 
announcements, but horrible for conversations. There is no permanence 
to these lists; every conversation is a flash in the pan.

How many times does the same, or similar question get asked? Can you 
research a topic on this list? What if you come in late, as I did? 
Surf through thousands of posts most of which are of no interest to me?

This was the problem with the discdog lists on Yahoo. the list 
functioned perfectly for announcements but was sorely lacking in 
terms of building a community. The lack of permanence, I believe, is 
the big shortcoming of these lists in developing a community. First 
off there is the difficulty of finding information that is of 
interest to you; drilling down into the thousands of messages with 
different subjects is near impossible. Then there is the fact that 
people can say anything they want and it is gone, never to be seen 
again. This allows people to really act shitty towards eachother.

2 years ago i created http://k9disc.com (orignially a phpBB) as an 
alternative to the lists. It was slow going at first, as none of the 
discdogging heavy hitters hopped on the band wagon, and a bunch still 
are not members, but it really picked up steam, and we now have 227 
or so members and nearly 8000 posts. It has been an invaluable 
resource for new discdog players across the world. Things are divided 
up into topics, and while there are a lot of posts, at least you have 
a topic that you can start your drilling in.

I am all for a bridging the gap with a good forum set up instead of 
this list. I am sure I would participate more. I would also be able 
to learn so much more.

Anybody know how to run scoop? Great program for communities, and it 
totally could handle 1000 members.

Later,
Ron



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