Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: types of list servs (was 'Archive question')

[Debbie Behrens (sw) (dbehrens]

Dec 14, 2002:  Check out new URL at end of this (and every list message) for 
Cohousing-L info page.  Season's Greetings.  Fred, list manager.
- -

Fred, Greg, Sharon, etc

Do you (or anyone else on coho-l) know anything about WIKI lists, and their
pros and cons compared to regular list servs?  Would they be appropriate for
a neighborhood coho group?  Do you know if they're hard to set up, to
archive?

I like that coho-l is not on Yahoo, despite a few less features.  I'm on
about a dozen Yahoo lists.  I am a bit concerned that Yahoo could become
monopolistic at some point, and control all or most lists, the same way that
Microsoft controls so much PC software.  Privacy issues and all that that
entails. (Do I sound paranoid or what! <grin> )

Debbie Behrens
Highline Crossing
Littleton CO

-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Greg Dunn
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 11:07 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: RE: [C-L]_Archive question


Dec 14, 2002:  Check out new URL at end of this (and every list message) for
Cohousing-L info page.  Season's Greetings.  Fred, list manager.
- -

>>
Newsgroups are generally unmoderated, and posters can be anonymous,
which means that there is no protection from obnoxious behavior.
<<

[Sharon, I respond to your questions as well as Art's comments in this
message]

It is possible to run a private news server, but you have to buy the
software and/or find a host to run it.  However, my one experience with
doing this did not go particularly well. A few of us were hoping to move
a group that was hosted on a list server to a private newsgroup - but
found that most of the participants in the group just didn't bother to
learn how to connect to the newsgroup.[1] The few who did found little
traffic there, because, of course, you have to get a critical mass of
participants to make any electronic discussion group take off.


The reason we wanted to move the group from the list server to the
newsgroup was that the message traffic was near unbearable. List servers
break down from a usability viewpoint at a certain level of traffic.
With an avalanche of messages it becomes difficult to follow particular
conversations; and of course most people don't know how to set automatic
filters in their email program, so messages from list servers pile up in
their inbox, obscuring private email.  People accidentally reply to list
server messages as if they were private ones, which can be embarrassing
and worse.  And of course there's just the sheer volume of stuff you
have to download all the time - especially tough if you're not on a
high-speed connection.

With newsgroups, only message headers get downloaded (by default): the
body of a message doesn't get downloaded until you select it for
reading. This greatly reduces the quantity of material that has to be
downloaded - very important if you participate in a lot of groups.
Newsgroups also keep messages sorted into conversation threads, and the
connection between messages is independent of the Subject assigned by
the author. That means that when a particular conversation begins to
drift from its original (or most recent) topic, you can re-label your
reply to reflect the changing content, without disturbing the connection
between messages that shows the flow of the conversation.

>>
Usenet seems to be waning in favor of web-based forums, since the
idealistic organization of Usenet has been abused so much by spam and
bad behavior.
<<
I'm sure that the fraction of group messaging that occurs in newsgroups
is dropping relative to the total amount of such messaging (since new
recruits are joining the party more through web-based forums and
Yahoogroups than elsewhere) - but do have you seen any data to indicate
that the absolute volume of participation on usenet is dropping?  Seems
to me that usenet's pretty lively.  And many steps have been taken to
counteract the spamming.

Bottom line for me is: there's just no other group messaging medium that
equals the newsgroup for crispness of response (in perusing, reading,
and responding to messages) and for ease of managing high-quantity
participation (whether from participation in groups with a large amount
of message traffic, or participation in many different groups, or a
combination of those).  In web forums of all stripes, response is
sluggish, even over broadband or DSL. List servers (and Yahoogroups used
like a list server) spew gushers of emails into your Inbox which YOU
have to sort, organize, and manage.

But I use them all, because the bottomer bottom line is:  wherever the
information and dialog you want access to lives, you have to go.  8-)

Greg Dunn


-------
[1] Connecting to newsgroups isn't hard, but a lot of people use their
computers for little more than email, and aren't easily motivated to go
beyond that.  This is by no means a judgment -- I don't know how to use
95% of the functions on my microwave oven! -- it is simply an
observation.





-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org] On Behalf Of Art Gorski
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 8:01 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Archive question


>> I personally prefer Yahoogroups to list servers because they make it
>> easier to set and change personal options, and offer the ability to
>> go semi-dormant (online perusal only) without suspending the
>> subscription. Of course, newsgroups are even better, by a wide
>> margin.

I'm mightily suspicious of any web-based forum that requires
registration to use.  So I've never experienced Yahoogroups and can't
comment on that.

> But can you explain what newsgroups are? And channels? I never got my
> head
> around newsgroups and now I have channels popping up everywhere.

Usenet is the 'news' service that runs on top of the Internet, much
like the World Wide Web and email are other examples of services that
run on the Internet.  There are 10's of thousands of 'newsgroups',
which you access by running a 'newsreader' client program that connects
to a news server that carries the 'feed'.  Netscape Communicator has a
newsreader built-in, as does Outlook Express, so you may already have
the software you need to access it.  Your internet service provider
almost surely has a news server running.  You'd have to ask them how to
connect to it.

Newsgroups are generally unmoderated, and posters can be anonymous,
which means that there is no protection from obnoxious behavior.  Some
groups are better than others.  There are groups for literally
anything, but you don't have to subscribe to the one's that shock your
morals.  Usenet seems to be waning in favor of web-based forums, since
the idealistic organization of Usenet has been abused so much by spam
and bad behavior.

IRC, Internet Relay Chat, has thousands of 'channels' that people can
join.  It's like AOL Instant Messenger with strangers.  Everything
happens in real-time.  It's even more chaotic and anarchic than Usenet.

> In case you were in doubt, this is highly related to cohousing because
> email
> has been highly instrumental in developing cohousing communities,
> developing
> them faster, and allowing people to participate and join groups when
> they
> are geographically distant, contributing to greater diversity.

I believe that the current method of moderated mailing list with
web-based archives is a good choice for Cohousing-L.

Art Gorski    <http://is.rice.edu/~agorski/>
90% Houston, Texas and 10% Prescott, Arizona

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