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Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:07:47 -0800
From: Richard Hake <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Net-Gold] Re: The value of email discussion lists
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ABSTRACT: I list some of the advantages of email discussion lists as
given in posts titled "The value of email discussion lists" by Gerald
Grow (2009) of the JOURNET list and Dave Dillard (2009a,b) of the
NET-GOLD list. In addition, I list some strengths of Academic
Discussion Lists as given in "Over Two-Hundred Education & Science
Blogs" by Hake (2009a) of the PhysLrnR list].
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Gerald Grow (2009) [this APA style formatting means that the full
reference can be found in the REFERENCES list below] in his JOURNET
post of 14 November 2009 titled "The value of email discussion lists"
gave an excellent list of the advantages of email discussion lists.
Grow wrote: [bracketed by lines "GGGGG. . . . ."; my insert at ". . .
.[[insert]]. . . ."; my apologies to those on the JOURNET list who
have previously seen Grow's post]:
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Now that Web 2.0. . . . .[[see, e.g.,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0>]]. . . .. vehicles may be
displacing them, I have a few thoughts in praise of email listserves.
Email discussion lists were one of the earliest applications of Web
2.0 thinking -- long before Web 2.0 was thought up.
They provide "push" technology: You check your email anyway, and
listserves push the discussion to your attention then. You don't have
to log into a separate location to reach a listserv.
They are interactive: You can participate, contribute, respond.
They are generative: You can create articles, posts, comments. You
can originate a discussion thread.
They are user-modifiable: You can change the settings on when and how
you receive them.
They are social networking: People connect with people of similar
interests, in groups with focused purposes.
Listserves are collaborative: People discuss, form teams, work
together on projects, exchange work products.
They are linked: People on listserves regularly provide links to other
sources.
They are fast: While Web 2.0 sites are often graphics-intensive and
server-intensive and can at times become slow, listserves can run on
any software rarely slow or falter. They work, they work well, they
are reliable. . . . .[ [Note that the term "listserves" should not be
confused with "listservs" - strictly speaking, a "listserv" is a
discussion list (such as JOURNET) running on the Listserv software by
L-Soft <http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv.asp>, while a
"listserve" is generally taken to mean ANY email discussion list.]].
. . . . .
They are contextual: When there is no activity on a listserv (sic),
you don't get any messages. When there is activity, you do. . . . . .
.[[on LISTSERV lists one can maintain sanity and hard-drive space by
subscribing in the NOMAIL option, thus receiving NO MAIL from the
list while being free to browse the archives and post at one's
leisure]]. . . . When members consider a topic significant, it gets
lots of messages. When members consider it insignificant, it gets
few. There is a kind of gatekeeping by consensus. . . .[[but my
experience has been that the "gatekeeping" tends to favor the trivial
over the substantive]] . . . . . .
On top of that, listserves are cheap, low-maintenance, comparatively
low-tech, efficient methods of targeted communication.
And, unlike most Web 2.0 technology, they can be carried out without
the support of advertising. Listserves, in this light, and unlike
most ostensibly "free" technology, are NOT primarily vehicles for
getting eyeballs to ads, but are focused almost entirely on
accomplishing the purposes of their participants.
As the Web becomes too large for all its parts to be supported by
advertising, what will survive? Perhaps listserves should be kept
around against that day.
Posted on a listserv . . . . . .[viz. JOURNET - both a listserv and
a listserve]. . . . .
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
Dave Dillard (2009a,b), manager of the internet-mining discussion
list Net-Gold <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold/>, in response
to Grow's post, wrote:
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I do want to thank Gerald Grow for this substantial listing of the
benefits of discussion groups. They are a tremendous asset to
members of the internet community and I do not believe that they will
go away soon.
Unlike blogs, for example, they are participative and not limited to
an owner making comments on whatever topic and others posting
responses.
I could follow any post on this or any other list with comments about
any other topic. One key here is to realize that discussion groups.
. . . [[listed below in the present email]]. . . . are not limited to
those lists using Listserv software at various colleges, universities
and other institutions. Yahoo Groups. . . .
.[[<http://groups.yahoo.com/>]]. . . . and Google Groups . . . .
.[[<http://groups.google.com/>]]. . . . . .are very extensive
collections of groups run in a very similar fashion and on Yahoo
Groups lists, one can also run a links collection, a photograph
section and have public or private sections as the list owners
wishes.
One vital and very important aspect of a discussion group is the
availability of its content publicly on the web. . . . .[[and provide
search engines, whereas private groups and boards on servers such as
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, do not generally provide search
engines.]]. . . .. . . . . . . . . Having an archived discussion
group also provides the opportunity for indexing its content through
the use of search engines. . . .
<http://guides.temple.edu/content.php?pid=1282&sid=376096>,
and more importantly
<http://sites.google.com/site/netgoldsubjectindex/Home/main-site-map>.
From this index:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
Not to be outdone by Grow and Dillard in "Over Two-Hundred Education
& Science Blogs" [Hake (2009a)], I list some strengths and weaknesses
of Academic Discussion Lists (ADL's) and Blogs. The strengths of
ADL's are listed as [please see the post for references other than
Hake (2007)]:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
(1) Dan MacIsaac (2000) . . . . .in "Communities of on-line physics
educators," discusses the nature of academic discussion lists in
physics (similar comments apply to similar lists for other
disciplines):
"It's a physics educator's dream-a readily available group of
like-minded people with a variety of backgrounds and expertise who
want to discuss physics and physics pedagogy with their peers. For
the teacher who is feeling overscheduled, isolated, or lonely this
'coffee klatch' opportunity is a boost that lasts all day and on into
the night. We're talking about the virtual world of electronic
mailing lists that are dedicated to the teaching and learning of
physics. This electronic community is bound together through shared
information and experience, an on-line culture that comprises
high-school, college, and university instructors, researchers,
hobbyists, students, retired teachers, and amateurs."
(2) Amitai and Oren Etzioni (1997) in "Communities: Virtual vs. Real"
wrote (paraphrasing):
"Virtual on-line communities complement and reinforce 'real' off-line
communities and have several advantages over the latter, e.g.:
(a) easy communication over national borders and time zones;
(b) inclusion of homebound (aged, ill, or handicapped) people;
(c) accommodation of more individuals than off-line meeting rooms;
(d) strong memories;
(e) high safety;
(f) allowance for exploration of new relationships and identities -
as documented by MIT's Sherry Turkle (1997), and
(g) indifference to physical appearance and off-line identity. . . .
.[[who would pay any attention to my posts if it were known that I'm
a bloodhound?]]. . . . . . . ."
(3) Discussion lists running on the popular LISTSERV
<http://www.lsoft.com/> software feature excellent archives and
powerful search engines that allow searches by keywords, author,
subject title, date, or any combination of those. I know of no such
search engines in the Blogosphere.
(4) In "Over Sixty Academic Discussion Lists. . ." [Hake (2007)], I
wrote: ". . . . . Academic Discussion Lists provide an effective but
seldom used mechanism for tunneling through interdisciplinary
barriers, caused in part by the traditional departmental structure of
universities. This underutilized potential for education research and
development is represented schematically . . . .[on the next page]. .
. " Similar figures would apply to other types of R & D. The
partially open window between Astronomy- and Physics-education
research and development in the top figure appears to be a fortunate
carryover from the traditional close links between those two
disciplines in non-educational basic research.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Honorary Member, Curmudgeon Lodge of Deventer, The Netherlands.
<[log in to unmask]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>
<http://HakesEdStuff.blogspot.com/>
REFERENCES [Tiny URL's courtesy <http://tinyurl.com/create.php>.]
Grow, G. 2009. "The value of email discussion lists," JOURNET post of
14 Nov 2009 08:09:52-0500; online at <http://tinyurl.com/yaxkrzw>. To
access the archives of JOURNET one needs to subscribe, but that takes
only a few minutes by clicking on <http://tinyurl.com/ycjpyqo> and
then entering one's email address and a password of one's choosing.
I thank Dave Dillard for calling my attention to this post.
Dillard, D.P. 2009a. "Re: The value of email discussion lists,"
JOURNET post of 14 Nov 2009 09:19:19 -0500; online on (a) the JOURNET
archives at <http://tinyurl.com/y8dgdh8>, and also copied into
Dillard (2009b).
Dillard, D.P. 2009b. "DISCUSSION GROUPS : INTERNET : EMAIL: The Value
of Email Discussion." Net-Gold post of 14 Nov 2009 18:34:00-0500;
online on the OPEN! Net-Gold archives at
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/30783>.
Hake, R.R. 2007. "Over Sixty Academic Discussion Lists: List
Addresses and URL's for Archives & Search Engines," online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/ADL-L.pdf> (640 kB), or as ref.
49 at <http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>. This will soon be
updated so as to include LearningSciences, MathEdu-L,
TeamLearning-L, TrDev-L, the new address for TeachEdPsych, and a
pointer to lists on H-Net. See the ADDENDUM for a critique of
academic discussion lists.
Hake, R.R. 2009a. "Over Two-Hundred Education & Science Blogs," 30
March; online at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/Over200EdSciBlogsU.pdf> (2.6
MB). The abstract is online with a provision for comments at
<http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/Blogged>. Note that
the 55 responses (as of 23 Nov 2009 11:34:00-0800) are mostly SPAM -
a disadvantage of the Blogosphere. See also Hake (2009b,c,d).
Hake, R.R. 2009b. "Academic Discussion Lists: Faculty Lounges,
Collective Short-Term Working Memories, or Academic Journals?" Blog
post of 20 May 2009; online with provision for comments at
<http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/2009/05/academic-discussion-lists-faculty.html>.
Hake, R.R. 2009c. "Re: Change or Die: Scholarly E-Mail Lists, Once
Vibrant, Fight for Relevance #2," online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives
at <http://tinyurl.com/l37toq>. Post of 2 Jul 2009 17:28:53-0700 to
AERA-L and on 2 Jul 2009 20:08:00 to Net-Gold. The abstract is also
at
<http://hakesedstuff.blogspot.com/2009/07/re-change-or-die-scholarly-e-mail-lists.html>
with a provision for comments.
Hake, R.R. 2009d. "Re: Need suggestions for promoting the discussion
listserv. online on the OPEN! AERA-H archives at
<http://tinyurl.com/yh5p8kg>. Post of 11 Aug 2009 13:02:52-0700 to
AERA-H and various other AERA discussion lists.
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