On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Andy Powell wrote:
> It seems to have become quite common for messages in the 'open access'
> discussion to be cross-posted to 3 separate lists (the American Scientist
> Open Access Forum and the JISCmail jisc-development and lis-elib lists).
> I'm not aware of any other email-based debate where cross-posting happens
> so regularly.
>
> Can I tentatively suggest that such cross-posting runs counter to normal
> netiquette and that it would be better for the discussion to be carried
> out on a single list - probably the American Scientist Open Access Forum?
>
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
>
> Note, I'm not suggesting that cross-posting is never acceptable - just
> that it shouldn't be seen as the default! :-)
>
> For general interest, a simple analysis of the jisc-development and
> lis-elib lists indicates the following:
>
> jisc-development contains 509 addresses
> lis-elib contains 750 addresses
> 152 addresses on jisc-development are also on lis-elib
>
> but this is based on a very simple string comparison of email addresses,
> so I suspect that the overlaps between the two lists is actually somewhat
> higher.
>
> I can't seem to get subscription details for the American Scientist Open
> Access Forum so it isn't easy to see how much overlap there is between
> that list and the two JISCmail ones.
>
> Andy (not the list owner, so these are just my personal opinions!)
> --
> Distributed Systems, UKOLN, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK
> http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ukoln/staff/a.powell +44 1225 383933
> Resource Discovery Network http://www.rdn.ac.uk/
>
Dear JISC list members:
I am quite happy to stop posting to the JISC-dev list, if that is the
preference of the majority or even a plurality of the list's
membership. It is always hard to judge the will of a list
on the basis of postings from a few of its members (there are
509 on the JISC-dev list). I will send Andy a copy of the
AmSci list so he can do a DIFF.
I have been cross-posting -- not all postings, but the more important
ones: Andy can do a DIFF there too, say, for January 2004 so far at
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
-- on the hypothesis that those particular postings were of interest to
JISC-dev and E-Lib too.
If a majority or plurality judge that these postings are not of
interest, I will immediately stop. Dissenting members, if any,
can sign on to AmSci at the above address.
Random or constant cross-posting is called as spam. Specifically
targeted cross-posting is a necessity sometimes, where the entire
interested population is not all on one list.
I stand ready to act according to the sense of the list. I am branching
this to E-lib too, as there may be parallel sentiments there too.
Best wishes,
Stevan Harnad [log in to unmask]
Professor of Cognitive Science
Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582
Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865
University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Highfield, Southampton
SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
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