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I think the great advantage of email forums over website-based forums is that more people look at them and do so more often. This makes for better communication. I agree with Richard. Email forum dinosaurs are alive and well and soaring on feathered wings. Elsewhere, small mammals, such as the much less formal BIG-Chat email forum occupy a different environmental niche and seem likely to be great underground survivors. http://www.big.uk.com/chat/index.htm Apart from slightly different perspectives regarding science communication, it's interesting to compare their dynamics. PSCI-COM is a much better source of certain kinds of information and doesn't clutter up your inbox with trivial chit-chat. Unlike BIG-Chat. There were more than twice as many messages last week on BIG-Chat compared with PSCI-COM, despite a significantly smaller number of subscribers. But most of these messages are very informal chat, sometimes highly creative but sometimes deliberately silly, like any pleasant, easy-to-enter conversation. Which really annoys folk who think silence should be maintained until someone has something important to say... So I think it is important to define the rationale for any online forum. Is it a 'notice board forum' for important information and messages or is it a 'coffee break forum' for more informal, creative discussion, necessarily mingling triviality with creativity? Clearly, we don't want important information-exchange to be spammed-up with trivia. At the same time, there's no better way to inhibit collaborative creativity that to tell people to shup up unless they have something important to say. The practical way to prevent email forum chit-chat from filling your inbox is to set up your email software's 'rules' to drop it into a separate folder. Maybe instructions on this should be provided to all new email list subscribers? On a visit to AstraZeneca's latest labs at Alderley Edge, I saw that the architect had carefully designed special networking 'hubs' into the layout of the building between the various labs, each with comfy chairs, tables small enough to chat across, and a ready supply of coffee. In each lab there also seemed to be a close association between a relaxation space and a whiteboard covered in indecipherable and presumably highly creative scribbles. If informal, pleasurable communication is important for scientists, surely it must be even more important for science communicators... Promoting public engagement with science through a contagious delight in phenomena * [log in to unmask] * http://www.interactives.co.uk * Give people facts and you feed their minds for an hour. Awaken curiosity and they feed their own minds for a lifetime. * Ian Russell ________________________________ From: psci-com: on public engagement with science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Ellam Sent: 01 December 2008 09:19 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [PSCI-COM] Is pscicom list a dinosaur? Hello all I think that the PSCI-Com list might be a dinosaur but then the dinosaurs were a hugely successful and long-lived group of animals which were only wiped out by an accident of literally Earth shattering proportions. PSCI-Com seems to be successful at what it does, and in Internet terms is a long-lived, not to say venerable forum. Like the dinosaurs it seems to be well adapted to its environment, so it should have a long future ahead of it, barring asteroid impacts or planet wide volcanic spasms (take your pick of catastrophes). Don't knock dinosaurs! Hope this helps Richard Ellam ********************************************************************** 1. To suspend yourself from the list, whilst on leave, for example, send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] with the following message: set psci-com nomail -- [include hyphens] 2. To resume email from the list, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: set psci-com mail -- [include hyphens] 3. To leave psci-com, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the message: leave psci-com -- [include hyphens] 4. Further information about the psci-com discussion list, including list archive, can be found at the list web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/psci-com.html 5. The psci-com gateway to internet resources on science communication and science and society can be found at http://psci-com.ac.uk 6. To contact the Psci-com list owner, please send an email to mailto:[log in to unmask] **********************************************************************