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Nathan wrote:
This is perhaps simplistic and applies mostly to this particular list, but volume has been actively discouraged in various ways over the last year or more by complaints and discussions on ways to decrease volume. Most often cited reason for complaining about posts was the quality of posts made by high volume posters - many who complained about that phenomena also mentioned that they were unsubscribing, or no longer actively reading the list as a result.
Indeed, volume alone isn't inherently a positive thing. A reduction in volume may signal a loss of interest in participation, or a change in signal-to-noise ratio, or a shift in participation to other forums, or a combination of all of these things.
The common wisdom is that mailing lists in general have been falling out of favor on the net for a while. Outside the wiki itself I see lots of Wikimedia-related activity on blogs, chat, and microblogging services like identi.ca, communication channels which some may find easier to mentally filter than a high-traffic mailing list.
A danger with these sorts of shifts is fragmentation of the discourse -- it used to be that everybody who was anybody had their Serious Discussions on wikipedia-l (later split into wikipedia-l, wikitech-l, wikien-l, intlwiki-l, foundation-l, .....) Bloggy-chatty things at least tend to link around among themselves, so perhaps splitting isn't too dangerous there, but I don't have a good feel for how much *actual productive planning* gets done on these channels.
Of course, many people seem to feel that *actual productive planning* doesn't tend to happen on the lists anymore -- conversations just go 'round and 'round and never end.
Let's not forget this is a wiki world -- be bold! Actions speak louder than posts... ;)
- -- brion