RE: UKNM: ADMIN: Times are a changin'

[Sam Michel]

At 09:45 09/11/98 +0000, Steve Johnston/IMRG wrote:

>I expressed my concerns in terms of the lists growing popularity and how 

>the references to media publicity at the time would accelerate this. Not 

>because I am elitist, but because as the list grows, the productivity will 

>fall. This much is evident from your lesson from history. Glenn Fleishman's 

>own words: "Frankly, I believe, even with the continued and active 

>participation of a good fraction of its membership, that the level of 

>discussion on the list has become less and less interesting over time, and 

>we're repeating ourselves ad nauseum for the most part." Now why does this 

>sound familiar?


I participated on Glenn's list at the time and it's a fair point. On the

other hand you could look at the Online-Ads list run by Richard Hoy

<http://www.o-a.com/>. Although the traffic is pretty chunky, I think he

does a pretty decent job of keeping the list on topic.


To a certain extent, it's impossible to stop cyclical questions popping up.

I guess it's a bit like chaos theory, each time the question alters a

little bit, as does the answer. The alternative to this is a much stricter

moderation policy and an archive of the messages for folks to look at

before posing obvious questions.


Of course, there's a geographic advantage in having a UK-dedicated

marketing list, too. Glenn's original list was vast, not surprising given

the number of people in the US involved in this kind of business. Whatever

happens, it's likely to be a while before sheer numbers overwhelm us.


>In closing, maybe it impossible for a list like this to survive its 

>success.


Maybe, although I'd like to think not. I suspect the dynamics of a mailing

list are a great deal more complex than the simple equation of more

subscribers = repeating subjects = boring list. We shall see.



Toodle Pip


Sam

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