Dear Karen:
I'll just mention, as regards the term "lurkers," that like Teena, I
do not take it to have such negative connotations. I think Wikipedia's
definition of a lurker is in this case more apt than
Merriam-Webster's: "In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who
reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file
sharing, social networking site, listening to people in VOIP calls
such as Skype and Ventrilo or other interactive system, but rarely or
never participates actively. Research indicates that "lurkers make up
over 90% of online groups" (Nonnecke & Preece 2000)." (from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker).
If you read further in the Wikipedia definition, you'll see that the
term used to (and sometimes still does) have negative connotations,
but I've used the term "lurkers" on this list before simply to refer
to the roughly 2,000 subscribers who never or very rarely post. (Some
of my best friends are lurkers!)
Carma R. Gorman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of Art and Design
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Associate Editor/Lead Reviews Editor, Design and Culture
> On 02/11/2012, at 11:50 AM, Karen wrote:
>> I came to read
>> and feel that though you had encouraged Abhishek to contribute, I had read
>> it to mean a negative hint to people who hibernated on the list. 'Lurkers'
>> to me means people who sneak in 'knicked' off ideas off without contribution
>> or in some ways fail to acknowledge contributors.
>>
>> Following the culture of most lists that would prefer a quoted definition
>> from reference, I will just pick one off from Merriam Webster that a
>> 'lurker' is someone who 'lie in wait in a place of concealment especially
>> for an evil purpose. b : to move furtively or inconspicuously etc' I believe
>> most references will give more insight into who is a lurker.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|