there are many pros and cons here; one of the pros
being that file-sharing can occur on facebook (within copyright law) but we
don't allow attachments on here (largely for the anti-virus angle as well as
copyright control)
a facebook group would be hard to moderate (i doubt
anyone on the jsm editorial board would have the time or inclinaion to do so),
and as such the new group could not have anything like "jsm" in the title, as
the Journal could not be affiliated with an unmoderated group that was not under
its control (in much the same way that any brand name will expect to be treated
in that fashion)
anyone here is quite free to set up external groups
that discuss similar subject areas, and to invite readers here to join. Posting
that ONCE, i would sugest. But this list is for a specific purpose, and it could
become quite bothersome if the majority of a person's postings on any topic were
"hey, there's a really interesting thread about this on my
magic-academic-facebook site right now!!".... there are also problems of
permission; this is a non-public forum, and if someone's comments were taken out
of there and posted elsewhere without their specific permission (or indeed to
somewhere where they were not a member) there is a whole host of
issues....
ditto MySpace, ditto Blogger, ditto Livejournal
etc
There is also the problem that (in the UK at least)
many of us look at JSM e-list threads on email while at work, and a lot of
British workplace computer managers have blocked access to social networking
sites like facebook as they are, as a poster here remarked, a major
time-suck
dave e