On Aug 7, 2011, at 8:43 AM, Beteena Paradise wrote: <snip>
> Though I have not been vocal for long stretches of time, I have been on this > list for about 7 or 8 years. I know many of you have been around for much > longer. And I am sure that this was once the best place for everyone to > congregate and share and explore the topic together. But as technology has > moved > forward, email lists are a dying breed. In my opinion, this is a key factor in what is going on. _All_ internet social/topical-communications contexts are in a constant state of flux. The activity and nature of each context is shaped not only by the structure of the interface (e.g., mailing list vs. usenet vs. blogs vs. organized blog-communities like LJ) and what types of interactions that interface encourages or discourages, enables or makes difficult -- but it's also shaped by the nature and trajectory of the group of people participating in it. Is is growing, static, or shrinking? What is the ratio of old-timers versus newcomers? What is the ratio of substantive posts versus spam and trolling? Is the number of participates large enough to make a "critical mass" that keeps conversations going? Is it so large that people give up on keeping up with everything and leave or skim? How general versus specialized is it? Does that level of specificity match what people are looking for? How many other contexts are there for the same topic, whether in other types of online structures or duplicated in the same structure? (E.g., Usenet was very strict about preventing duplication of topic or overspecialization, but mailing lists and places like LJ may have dozens of contexts with an identical purpose.) My own personal observation has been that pretty much every type of online discussion context goes through a similar trajectory: 1. The context is brand new and shiny and lots of people flock to it. New people are constantly joining and there is a lot of conversation. 2. The context matures and stabilizes. Units that fail to reach critical mass wither and die, but units that are vibrant and healthy form a sense of social unity and cohesion. This tends to be the point participates enjoy most and it is looked back on later as a Golden Age. 3. The context starts to feel over-large and bloated. Many people -- often those with the most expertise and knowledge -- start to feel it is taking up too much of their time and they begin to withdraw. Hot-button topics begin to recycle regularly. If the security structure of the context allows for it, spam and other annoying commercialisms begin to expand in the proportion of content they take up. 4. The shiny newness has worn off. For a variety of reasons (which would be another entire essay) a much smaller proportion of the content is new and substantive. People participate less (contributing to the previous) and begin looking for a new place to get the same feeling they had in stage 2. 5. The context starts feeling like an abandoned urban center. Depending on the structure, security architecture, and level of moderation, it may simply be full of abandoned buildings or it may be the haunt of metaphoric drug dealers and muggers. A few remnants of the original population hang on, hoping that things will get back to what they were, but they don't have the energy or the critical mass to turn it around. 6. But the inhabitants have gone _somewhere_. They just may be living a very different lifestyle, due to the structural differences in the new context they're inhabiting. I have a much more extended version of this set of observations on my Live Journal here: http://hrj.livejournal.com/82752.html and a follow-up here: http://hrj.livejournal.com/92871.html How's that for self-referentiality? But I guess my overall comment is "Nothing is permanent on the internet except change. This cycle of growth and decay has happened to absolutely every type of internet forum and is as natural a consequence of the nature of the medium as the forum's original growth and vibrancy was." Heather _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
