Interesting stuff. The lists are meant to be communities, but they are certainly lacking various features. The web interface for yahoo has gotten a bit more forum-like over time, in that you can see topics b thread now, but yeah its hardly a totally emersive group experience and obviously lacks multimedia joys.
I dont think forums or similar, with more obvious permanence, eliminate human friction more than mailing lists. They dont remove any of the causes of arguments, but they do at least keep things more compartmentalized, its easier for people to avoid threads that have been derailed, and a more sophisticated array of moderation options are available to deal with offenders. If anything,t he effect of permanence is that when someone whose been ranting and disruptive on a forum finally calms down, possibly months later, they look back and think the site makes them look like an ass and sometimes they demand that all their posts be removed (Ive had to deal with this once or twice on a forum). This causes problems if they posted valuable stuff to the community before being inflicted with trollitis. Anyway Ive often longed for a more versatile and multimedia place for this community to hangout and do its communication. The barrier isnt technology, I havent checked out Scoop yet but Drupal with Organic Groups could be made to serve the needs expressed, in somewhere between 1 day and 1 month, depending on exact features and how much excellence and free time the volunteer developer & server master had available to the cause. No, I think the barrier is getting everyone to shift. Its been tried once of twice but getting a mass of people to post somewhere new seems to be a challenge. Forks on more sepcific topics have not gone anywhere, forums have remained relatively barren. Indeed although I havent researched it properly recently, plenty of the video hosting/community sites have struggled somewhat to actually foster a vocal active mass of people that resembles a community, even when they have some better tech on their sites to serve this cause. In order to have another attempt to 'move' tat stands more chance of sucess than in the past, I believe some of the following would help: You need more people to actually express an eager desire for this stuff to happen Any compelling reasons why people prefer yahoo (eg prefer email to web for keeping up) must be addressed by the new service Many people must make a co-ordinated effort to have imput on the design & functionality of the new site, take ownership of it, and most importantly use it instead of posting here Whilst there is no designated 'dear leader' for this community, key people who have been passionate and active with the online and offline history of this community, need to speak up in favour of a migration, progress, and be active in promoting the new destination, and even putting peple off using the old one. Id love to be involved with the technical aspect of such things, but I sincerely believe that most of the above would be needed before working out how to implement and move ahead. Ive installed drupal lots of times as a test, and some of those times I simulated making a community that would serve this agenda, but content is king and the mockup is impossible to evaluate without the community - argh which came first, the chicken or the egg? Cheers Steve Elbows --- In [email protected], Ron Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. > > What this Yahoo Group needs is a Scoop site. > > This Yahoo group should build the dailyKos of Videoblogging. > > That's what we need to do, and that's how we're going to be able to > compete with all of the MyHeavy's that are going to be coming at us. > > We need a megaphone, and all we got here is a mailing list; we can't > even embed images! > > Anyway, I'd be happy to pitch in wholeheartedly, although I don't > have the DB/MYSQL knowledge to get Scoop configured, I'm sure I could > help dial her in. > > I don't think any of the other CMS setups are as community organized > as scoop, and don't think they would be as effective as scoop for a > couple thousand users. > > Check out: > http://boomantribune.com > http://dailykos.com > > If you haven't seen a scoop site. > > Anyway, just shooting my mouth off again, but I think the disconnect > I felt at Steve's quoted comment is something that we must deal with > if we are to mold any sort of values for newbies and the public in > general. > > I think the way to do that is to get our attention off this list and > on building something. > > Cheers, > > Ron Watson > > On the Web: > http://pawsitivevybe.com > http://k9disc.com > http://k9disc.blip.tv > > > On Feb 25, 2007, at 2:48 PM, Steve Garfield wrote: > > > At the public access station where I taught video blogging for a > > number of sessions, they've done away with the stand alone video > > blogging class and now have an 'Adding Multimedia to Your Web Page' > > class because people want to know how to put pictures, audio and > > video on the web to share... > > > > http://www.cctvcambridge.org/?q=node/94#html > > > > On Feb 25, 2007, at 2:08 PM, Gena wrote: > > > > > There are other folks "teaching" vlogging such as Videomaker > > magazine > > > who calls it "Vodcasting" They started a series of articles, have > > some > > > training videos and they are putting they thoughts and > > interpretations > > > on how to do it for their readers. Different views, different > > agendas. > > > > > > What are the Yahoo groups core values and how do we transmit them to > > > the newbies and other folks stepping up to the camcorder? > > > > -- > > Steve Garfield > > http://SteveGarfield.com > > > > > > __._,_._ > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
