apologies for double postings
my pervious message has nothing to do with 'the pupose of academic citation' and should have been posted under a different topic.
hi fellow EATAWians,
one of the little delights of ending my working day ('down under' in Oz) isreceiving messages from Europe as it wakes up...
anyway... back to business and apologies for lengthy response. If you're not interested in EATAW communication channels, please hit 'delete' now. Here's my suggestion:
In Australia we faced exactly the same problem of 'list-server overuse/abuse', people being frustrated by receiving many unnecessary/personal eMails, etc., as what EATAW members have recently been grappling with.
So please allow me to clarify what Martin meant and what I have already suggested to EATAW to explore, which is what we did in Australia a few years ago: setting up ONE listserver and ONE discussion forum ( 2 quite separate platforms). Martin and I are not suggesting setting up TWO listservers. I do not believe this would work - I understand EATAW tried to set up and run (unsucessfully) 2 listservers.
So, here's what we did:
step 1) we changed the 'settings' of our own listserver 'unilearn' (if you want to join, please see: http://www.aall.org.au/unilearn): when you hit reply, your response goes to the sender, not the whole list. If you want to reply to the sender AND the list, you need to hit 'reply all'. This can easily be changed, from the current EATAW listserver settings which mean that evryone's reply goes to the whole list. Here, simply changing this setting, solved some problems, but not all. In particular, many people (unilearn has about 600 subscribers) were still frustrated about the number of eMails they received. Others were frustrated that they couldn't find discussion 'threads' about discussions held on the listserver, some time ago, and which they had misplaced/deleted ...
step 2) we created a separate discussion forum (NOT a second listserver) incorpoarted within the website of the Association for Academic Language & Learning (AALL), which you can have a look at (read messages), but need to register with, in order to post a message (topic). You do not need to be a member of AALL and this is all free of charge, of course: http://aall.org.au/forum
step 3) we encouraged members of AALL and unliearn listerver users to a) NOT use unilearn listserver to communicate/discuss, but 'notify/alert' only, b) use the 'unilearn' listserver to post BRIEF notifications of events (conferences, ...), jobs and discussions and refer members to the URL of the posting on the AALL discussion forum, and, c) use the AALL discussion forum to discuss, exchange views, files, documents, etc..
Let me illustrate: Gavin wants to know what he asked.
a) he posts a message on the 'discussion forum' (as I did, to exemplify, see url below)
b) then, he sends a message through EATAW listserver asking his question and inviting replies, and refers EATAW lists-members to the URL of his posting on the forum, eg.: http://aall.org.au/forum/gavins-question.
Advantages:
1) only brief messages are received via EATAW listserver
2) (almost) no more personal communications are possible (see step 1)
3) discussion forum members can select what topics they want/do not want to be informed about ('subscribe to')
4) discussion/issues, information, notifications, are grouped and 'archived' so can easily be accessed whenever wanted/needed
By and large this set up has been working well over the past few years, for us here: fewer frustrations caused by eMail floods, more focused discussions, etc. Occasionally one of us (usually me) needs to remind a listserver user to 'would you mind moving your discussion from the listsever to the AALL discussion forum' so more of us can benefit and so it can be kept for later.
I hope this helps.
alex
PS: in the spirit of what I'm suggesting and apologies for being devious: I will not reply to messages sent to all EATAW, but only to those sent to me personally at the following AALL discussion forum URL: http://aall.org.au/forum/listserver-vs-discussionforum
PPS: I won't tell you what most students whom I talk to, who are into blogs, facebook, jitters, fritters and other forms of eCommunication, tell me about how archaic 'listservers' and 'forums' are - and WE are meant to lead the way??
...................................................................................................................................
Alex BARTHEL
Director, ELSSA Centre, University of Technology, Sydney www.elssa.uts.edu.au
Public Officer & NSW representative, Association for Academic Language & Learning www.aall.org.au
po box 123, BROADWAY 2007, NSW, Australia
p +61 2 9514 2325 f +61 2 9514 2321 m 0408 269 799 m intl +61 408 269 799
...................................................................................................................................
________________________________________
From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Harbord [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, 19 February 2010 19:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The purpose of academic citation: a request for help
If I may respond to Martin Davies suggestion as a former list organiser,
when the EATAW list was hosted in Copenhagen, we had the same discussion
about mailboxes being flooded and we set up the EATAW-discuss list as a
second, discussion list. The list was never really much used, some
people posted official announcements there that should have been posted
to the main list and most people continued posting their discussion
topics to the main list. By the time we moved the list to the UK
recently, the board members were unanimous that the experiment of two
lists had been a failure.
One easy way to deal with mail from lists is to set up a rule (nearly
all mail programmes let you do this) that diverts EATAW mails into a
folder set up for that purpose. I do this with wcenter, the US writing
centers list which generates about 40 mails a day at times - I can then
leave them, read them at my leisure, and delete all those which are on a
thread I'm not interested in without opening them and they don't
interfere with my incoming mail.
Hope this helps,
John
>>> Martin Davies <[log in to unmask]> 18/2/10 23:26 >>>
Not everyone wishes to read these essentially personal exchanges
between individuals. However, some of us dont want to leave the list
either as it does have some useful announcements.
The list organisers might wish to adopt the practice of routinely
moving conversational topics to a website forum as done for the AALL
list: http://aall.org.au/forum
Topics start on an email list and are quickly migrated to the Forum
leaving the list for announcements and other useful things.
When a topic is migrated to the forum the list manager notifies members
with a link to the topic.
____________________
Dr Martin Davies I Acting Director, Teaching and Learning Unit I
Business and Economics I University of Melbourne
Level 6, 198 Berkeley Street, Parkville 3010 I
P: 8344 5727 I F: 8344 8597 I M: 042 574 6523
Institutional 'web: http://tlu.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/
Personal 'web: http://tlu.ecom.unimelb.edu.au/about_us/martin.html
http://unimelb.academia.edu/MartinDavies
Associate Editor: Higher Education Research and Development
Guest Editor: Critical Thinking in Higher Education (due for
publication in 2010)
____________________
UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
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