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Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community
Subject:Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community From:Greg Holmes <greg -dot- holmes -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:06:27 -0400
Al Geist wrote:
>While some have focused on "stewardship", building
>and running the list is a business.
So successful lists don't exist that aren't run
as a business? News to me.
>TECHWR-L on the surface looked like a magnanimous gift
>by the Rays to the Technical Writing community, but
>behind the scenes it was a real business with all
>the costs and problems of a real business. If it
>wasn't run like one, it would have died long ago.
I participate in plenty of lists that aren't run
like a business, at least not as far as the
community is concerned. In the case of Yahoo
Groups, Yahoo runs the hosting, bandwidth, ads
etc. as a business, but the moderation and actual
content (the discussion by members) aren't really
part of that.
>The Rays haven't made it complicated. Go out an
>try to buy any business and see if the discussion
>does not involve costs, "tools", etc.
My point was merely that if the goal is to keep the
list going, the idea of using a Yahoo Group is not
absurd at all. If there are other goals involved,
then that changes things.
Ad-supported web sites and lists may have
become a low margin commodity - hard to make
a go of yourself at the nuts and bolts level, but
cheap or free to make use of to further discussion
and community (which are the main goal?).
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