ANST - What has happened to the List?

[j'lynn yeates]

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* -----Original Message-----
* From: owner-ansteorra at ansteorra.org
* [mailto:owner-ansteorra at ansteorra.org]On Behalf Of Carl Chipman
* Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2000 01:47
* To: Ansteorra Mailing List
* Subject: ANST - What has happened to the List?
* 
* When I first started playing about 3 years ago, the Ansteorra 
* mailing list was a active, interesting place.  Now the only
messages I see are the
* forwards of Sir Balthazar through wolf (which I do enjoy).

thanks ... and i'm sure Balthi will be pleased
 
* Why aren't we talking to each other anymore?  Are all the 
* sub-lists taking up attention?  How come no one publishes event
reports like 
* they used to.  I loved those, they let me know whats going on even
when I 
* couldn't be there.

i think what you are seeing is a reflection of the internet growing
up, people getting to reply on it more, and things getting easier ..
ergo, the lack of traffic in this list may be a matter of it's own
sucess 

three years ago, running a elist was not the easiest thing in the
world for the non tech professional (though some of us cut our teeth
in the BBS world of the mid-80's).  so along comes a
wizard/professional and sets up a limited hierarchy of message
channels .... these were sucecssful and spawned more regional and
local "official" channels in the wake of the first ones.  

naturally these fragmented the message base with each new fork.   
then along comes the "free" elist services and "a thousand flowers
bloomed" overnight - each reflecting any imaginable specialty (in
several cases, competing groups on the same or near0same subject
appear and the "duel-for-users" begins .... check the free lists
offerings and note the duplication factor).  

so now folk have a wide range of specialty subjects and the "triage"
factor sets in - folk spend time discussing matters in the specific
specialty list(s) that attract them most (where they were previously
discussing it all in the central channel).  time is usually a finite
resource, so there there would be less and less time spent in the
general channels 

as folk flow with this new-world-order, fewer and fewer new threads
are planted in the general group (and fewer replies) so folk tend to
scan over the "empty" groups in search of new/evolving conversation
threads in other areas ....
 
if you aggregate all the groups that spawned off from the origional
few, and track them over time, i would wager you will see a overall
increasing trend at the same time some specific ones appear to be on
the decrease. 

on a scadian political front ... it could also show a trend away from
the larger entities and towards the smaller local (and in some case
regional) groups as well as more narrow "special interest groups" ...
case: the northern region seems on the upswing, while the southern
seems totally static after a fevered quest for regional identity
(burned out?).

all in all, interesting to watch

'wolf
  

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