Kat Nagel's "Life Cycle of Mailing Lists"

["Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>]

I think no one has posted this recently.  I understand Kat
was inspired to write this by a musicians' list, but it does
seem to be widely applicable.  I've copied it from
http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/lifelist.html .

The Natural Life Cycle of Mailing Lists
Kat Nagel

Every list seems to go through the same cycle:

1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and
gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).

2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting
to the list, and brainstorm recruitment strategies).

3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy
threads develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).

4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others;
lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help
other experts as well as less experienced colleagues;
friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers
are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone --
newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions,
suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).

5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages
increases dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to
every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noise
ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people don't
limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees
with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more
bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads
than is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets
annoyed).

6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame
everyone who asks an 'old' question or responds with
humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic
drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues;
all interesting discussions happen by private email
and are limited to a few participants; the purists
spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating
each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).

OR

6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of
the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping
up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their
second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives
contentedly ever after).

---------------------------------------------------------------
Mark L. Levinson - Herzliya, Israel - nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il
---------------------------------------------------------------


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