[WikiEN-l] What's going on? - Inquiry 2

[George Herbert]

On 9/12/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > Folks,
> >
> > I have just spent some time reviewing the List's archives for the past
> > several months, and it is clear something is changing ­ and not for the
> > good. The dialogues have become more combative, argumentative and
> > downright
> > mean. The individual contributions have become more aggressive,
> > intolerant,
> > patronizing, bullying, insulting, and downright mean. There has been a
> > steady decline in fairness, civility and just plain listening.
> >
> > Also, it appears that the majority of the Members of this List are willing
> > to scrutinize anyone or anything but themselves.
> >
> > What's going on?
> >
> > Marc Riddell
>
>
> Did you read through more than just the last few months? There's six years
> of archived lists; they make for pretty interesting if headache-inducing
> reading. I would be interested in your conclusions based on a year or
> three's worth of data. (Of course it's very time-consuming to read archives,
> I know!)
>
> Most of what I've seen in the archives is that there are issues that come up
> periodically, with never much consensus or a slow shift in how the issues
> are argued; and issues that keep coming up but have a drift towards
> consensus until something gets done. It's also interesting to note the
> various groups of people that crop up, are very active on the lists for a
> few months or even years, then go away; versus the few hardy souls that are
> still posting and have been here since the beginning. Also interesting are
> the brilliant ideas/proposals that you see pop up once in a while that seem
> perfectly reasonable, but nothing ever happened with; occasionally an
> entirely different, newly enthusiastic person will come up with the same
> idea later. There's definitely a rhythm to what issues come up and how that
> I haven't really spent enough time with the archives to determine; but the
> lists seem to have been pretty argumentative since the beginning all in all,
> with presumably a steadily expanding readership, but perhaps not a
> proportional increase in posters at any one time.
>
> -- phoebe

Without having re-read the archives over that period of time (I've
been on-list for about


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com