Markus Wrote: > Hi, Ron. > > You present some interesting points. I both agree and disagree with > some of these statements. In particular, I have been finding great > communities in these groups since before they belonged to Yahoo! (used > to be called e-groups back around 2000). > > on the other hand, there is indeed room for much improvement and it > looks to me like Yahoo! is very interested in hearing how they can be > improved. > > for example, check out: > > http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006541.html > > I had a great conversation with the groups product manager on > Friday. I > was pleasantly surprised to find out that he's a member of this group > so know that they are indeed listening. Perhaps you can elaborate on > the dysfunctional elements.
The problem I see with these lists are the lack of permanence of each post and that it is a PUSH of information. (I too used the groups site and have been able to pull information instead of get the glut in my inbox, so I get that...) We all get that stuff whether we want it or not. Of course we can easily delete it, but, personally I always get sucked in. Anyway, that kind of stuff is hard to avoid in the lists. Also, I find the lack of permanence brings out the worst in people. Pettiness and personal attacks are allowed, as they are here and gone; the standards of debate totally fall apart because nobody's ever going to read this again. Have it sitting on a server somewhere, accessible with a simple search string, or tag, in full context of conversation, and people are far less apt to say stupid and mean things. My site: http://k9disc.com started because the newly assimilated Yahoo lists had become so poisoned. There were a handfull of cool, but pissed off, guys and gals that seemed to needle each other until someone exploded. These people were leaders in the sport. Their followers took up sides, and we had some horrible community relations. Anyway, I figured that a good deal of those problems came from the lack of permanence of the posts. That there was little danger of people bumping into ugly behavior because it was here then gone; down the memory hole. I started K9disc.com as a discussion forum and portal site to change that, and to provide a tool for learning. One look at the discussion forum and you can see that it is an entirely different organism than a list. If you feel like signing up for a contrasting take on communication, you can try to get on one of the discdog lists and see the entirely different focus and tone. I happen to think that the tone and community is far more productive at k9disc.com than on the list, but I could be biased. I really don't trust Yahoo to make good decisions about how to develop communities. They are going to make communities profit, and the videoblogging community should not be held hostage by Yahoo's need for profit, not when we can make something together that can grow as our needs grow. > Thanks for pointing out Scoop. I had not seen that before. I will def > check it out. I would be interested in know what particular features > you like besides the open-source ness. The additional features are a rating system that controls spam and elevates quality content to the top. I think it works pretty well. Designed to be a community site, there are diaries that are posted by community members. Each community member has a running blog and their submissions are posted to the 'recent diaries list'. Diaries that are well written, or in our case, well produced, could be recommended often enough to become a recommended diary. This recommended diary will enjoy visibility at the top of the page for a period of time. Recent diaries are submitted and scroll off as more diaries are entered. There is also a front page that is usually hosted by 'front pagers', or featured bloggers. The Diary entry format is quite simple with an Intro and Body. Overall, I think that scoop provides a community a good set of rules to operate under and a good set of features to highlight, inform, educate and entertain the members of that community. Check out: http://boomantribune.com http://michiganliberal.com and http://redstate.com (for those requiring fairness & balance in your news) And check out the sites on: http://www.scoophost.com/ A little vPIP on a Scoop site with all of the people on this list as members would just totally Rock! Cheers, Ron Watson On the Web: http://pawsitivevybe.com http://k9disc.com http://k9disc.blip.tv On Feb 25, 2007, at 5:59 PM, Markus Sandy wrote: > Ron Watson wrote: > > > > What are the Yahoo groups core values and how do we transmit > them to > > > > the newbies and other folks stepping up to the camcorder? > > > > While I love this group and find the information to be totally > > priceless, I find this juxtaposition that Steve puts up here to be > > quite interesting. > > > > We're doing all of our serious business at the Wal-Mart of the > net, a > > Yahoo Group. > > > > It's pretty ironic, really. > > > > All the reliance that we have on the Open Source Community, all the > > talk of grassroots and content creator control, and here we are > > spending hours and hours on a Yahoo List. > > > > Talk about flushing stuff down the memory hole. > > > > These lists were not meant to be communities. > > > > They are dysfunctional on their face, and are really only suitable > > for announcements and such. > > > Hi, Ron. > > You present some interesting points. I both agree and disagree with > some of these statements. In particular, I have been finding great > communities in these groups since before they belonged to Yahoo! (used > to be called e-groups back around 2000). > > on the other hand, there is indeed room for much improvement and it > looks to me like Yahoo! is very interested in hearing how they can be > improved. > > for example, check out: > > http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/006541.html > > I had a great conversation with the groups product manager on > Friday. I > was pleasantly surprised to find out that he's a member of this group > so know that they are indeed listening. Perhaps you can elaborate on > the dysfunctional elements. > > For obvious reasons, I will leave it to them to share any future > plans. But i can say that they are doing many exciting things and > think a lot about groups from a community point of view. > > As for openness, there are many forms: open-source, open-API's, etc. > > Many of us use tools like Blogger, Flickr, Blip.tv, Internet Archive, > Fireant, Mefeedia, SpinXpress, Google Maps, Feedburner and other great > services and tools. (Pardon me if I left out anyone's favorite > example) None of these are open-source, but all are open API which > allows us to mash up some great applications. > > As for open-source, I think a lot of it is great (and as with > anything, > much of it is not). I'm becoming a Drupal geek out of necessity and I > both love it and hate it. Can I just change it in anyway if I need > to? In theory yes, in practice maybe not. Or at least maybe not > easily. Not just Drupal, same for Wordpress, Joomla and others. It's > not just a skills issue. There are many reasons why even open source > can be very limiting at times. > > In a sense, most of my house is open source, but that does not > necessarily make it easy to add another room. There are many other > considerations. > > one more thing: unless it changed recently, we are mirroring this list > on Google. Ok, so that's like keeping another copy at K-Mart or some > Wal-mart competitor, but at least it's a step to avoid the memory hole > syndrome you mentioned. > > Thanks for pointing out Scoop. I had not seen that before. I will def > check it out. I would be interested in know what particular features > you like besides the open-source ness. > > Regards, Markus > > p.s., referring to an earlier email: i would definitely pay for your > vids if I could get my wife Alicia's Shelties a little training! Any > chance we can get you out to the digital dojo for a combined vlog/dog > workshop? :) > > -- > > Markus Sandy > > http://node101.org > http://ourmedia.org > http://spinxpress.com > http://apperceptions.org > http://havemoneywillvlog.com > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
