Dear Anthony,
I had to say something about this one as it’s been a discussion across so many wikmedia lists over the past years. Sorry about having to repeat all the stuff below but you know how it is – email is lousy for keeping threads together, so repetition is constant while our monthly usage is wasted.
Even though I’m across another five lists in the wikimedia.org domain, it still needs me to register = prove that I won’t contaminate this one; we can’t expect anything otherwise with horizontally challenged elists. And you will know the time it takes to delete the spam produced from all of them, with 95% of all emails being spam these days.
Let me use the ammunition you have provided for us and quote from Ben at Citizendium. HYPERLINK "http://mail.citizendium.org/pipermail/sharedknowing/2007-December/000001.ht ml"http://mail.citizendium.org/pipermail/sharedknowing/2007-December/000001. html “Wikis are bad for resolving disagreements or determining consensus. The wiki renders no verdict."
In the same manner elists are atrocious for sharing a discussion across projects (and their domains) since once they’re underway, busy people, quite reasonably, are stuck in their groove, with their mates, who help filter the good from crap.
Every media technology has its strengths and weaknesses. The effect of the wiki/list server combination has been to create different types of libraries of various quality articles, coupled with narrow communication channels in which the technically knowledgeable are safe from curious interlopers. So when such ideas (E.g) as broadening a reference desk are suggested it becomes heresy for it to be considered at a meta or extra-project level. HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#WP:Refe rence_Desk_should_be_split_off_into_its_own_separate_project"http://en.wikip edia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#WP:Reference_Desk_shoul d_be_split_off_into_its_own_separate_project ; that is, it cannot be considered by the broader community at all due to the nature of the silos. And that’s before you even consider adapting an English library for another language. HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_coordination%22http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_coordination
So let me just note an emailed proposal from Eric about a year ago. HYPERLINK "http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026707.html" http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/026707.html He also stuck the content over here. HYPERLINK "http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Outreach%22http://meta.wikimedia.or... /wiki/Wikimedia_Outreach He finishes off the prop with “There are literally thousands of groups we want to work with in our global strategy to spread free knowledge. This cannot be handled by a small committee or the staff of a chapter; it needs the support of a global community of volunteers”. Sounds fair, no?
Well I don’t know if that is gonna work either. But it’s a good attempt to get a few groovologists to jump. Ultimately we are trying to support global groups do what they do better, faster, easier, and once. So forums would be one step. But I would hope we might start getting serious this year about actually talking in REAL TIME rather than just writing asynchronously all the time.
OK That’s enough for this year. Back to groundhog day. Again and again and again.
PS. You should be able to set up a flag on a forum and get notice of a new thread, no problem. But theoretically, you’ll never get a forum to pick up all the references in an email header and put it in the right place. Cause some moderator might decide the conversation is not in the right spot in the first place. And as they can understand a broader environment, they’re probably right. Luv and kisses.
On Jan 1, 2008 1:52 PM, Earle Martin <HYPERLINK "http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l%22wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
On 28/12/2007, Risker <HYPERLINK
"http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l%22risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
A good idea, UC; forums are usually better at threaded conversation
and
it is much easier to correct things when folks go off-topic.
A bad idea. Forums are manifestly inferior to email, which can be read from anywhere using a number of methods, instead of having to go to a site and use some hateful forum software. Not that I feel the need to post here often, but it offers more value than any forum can. I certainly won't be joining.
I think the biggest advantage of email lists is that I can access all of them in one place. I'm subscribed to about a dozen different mailing lists which I can access all at once under the "mailing lists" label in gmail. So I get threads from Larry Sanger's SharedKnowing mailing list (HYPERLINK "http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/listinfo/sharedknowing%22http://mail.cit... zendium.org/mailman/listinfo/sharedknowing) mixed with threads from the Tor mailing list or-talk (HYPERLINK "http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/%22http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/) mixed with threads from the Tampa linux user group (HYPERLINK "http://slug.archives.nks.net/List/%22http://slug.archives.nks.net/List/) mixed with threads from the OpenStreetMap mailing list, etc. I can search all of these from one location, no one can delete messages on them out from under me, I find it very convenient. If I want to read one of the mailing lists individually I can do that too, but I pretty much never do this. I guess some people wouldn't like this, but for me it's almost essential.
When Citizendium switched their mailing list to forums and made their mailing list announce-only, my participation fell off dramatically. I've recently tried setting up their forums to send me an email whenever a new thread on the forums is started, but it isn't working very well. Gmail doesn't thread it properly, I have to mark each thread I want to follow separately, I lose the messages between the first and whenever I marked the thread. It doesn't work.
In theory there should be a way to get the best of both worlds, though. Just let me set a flag on the forum to send me an email every time a message is added, properly titled and referenced for any email program which handles threading, and let me reply to the messages by email (and pick up the references or whatever in the email header to direct the message to the right spot in the forums).
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On Jan 3, 2008 12:47 AM, simonpedia simon@cols.com.au wrote:
PS. You should be able to set up a flag on a forum and get notice of a new thread, no problem.
I can get notice of a new thread, but most forums don't let me get the actual content of any new thread. Whatever Wikback uses might actually be an exception, it seems to be sending me the full content of everything, which is just what I want.
But theoretically, you'll never get a forum to pick up all the references in an email header and put it in the right place. Cause some moderator might decide the conversation is not in the right spot in the first place. And as they can understand a broader environment, they're probably right.
I'd settle for the references to be correct as to the first place the message is posted. If it gets moved later, whatever.