When Margaret posted the note about her book, it piqued my interest, so I went and got a copy. I've gone through it now, and thought I'd post my thoughts on the book for others who might be thinking about it. First, a disclaimer -- I don't know Margeret at all, and I know John mostly from this list and because we've both run internet things forever -- and while John and I don't always agree on stuff, I always respect his opinion, even if we disagree. It was because he was a co-author that I decided to check it out. This book is going to be of different levels of interest to different people. here's my quick summary: "Boss just told me we need a community, whatever that is": B+ "I know how to run (name a service), looking to expand to other tools": B "I've got a handle on doing this, I want to run my stuff better": C "What do they know I don't know already?" : C- The first 2/3 of the book, roughly, is technical stuff. That's split up between mail lists (about 40%), IRC, Web-based services and USENet, the latter three about equally represented. There's a fairly strong bias towards e-mail as the core community technology, and against web (not surprising given John's background). IRC, ICQ, and other things are seen as supplementary tools. The technical stuff is split roughly in half, between "how to use this stuff" and "how to set up this stuff". The first part, on "how to use this stuff" for each service, if you split out of this book into a book of its own, is the one I'd love to beat my users over the head with when they do stupid things -- it's a great end-user overview of all of these tools, but, IMHO, more filler material in a "how to build these things" book. The book is a good "single source" for lots of interesting info and reference copies of things like welcome messages. The suggested rules, content, etc is in general pretty well thought out, and little of it will honk off the users of this list. The last third of the book is where you get away from "how to create a list", "how to configure a list", "how to use a list" type details to putting it together and running it, growing it, marketing it, financing it -- the non-technical side of things. Again, there's lots of good source material here (rules, FAQs, vendors, etc), all in a central location, well-organized and well-thought-out. I don't think there are any major revelations here, but it's a nice, fairly conservative package of common sense. Overall: I wish there'd been less material aimed at end-users instead of admins, although for the person trying to figure all this out from scratch, that's going to be more useful. You could build things by using nothing but the recommendations in the book (use the welcome messages, rules, etc without change) and not hurt yourself or look like an idiot. The non-technical side of things was more what I was looking for, and I found that content interesting but not toe-tingling. Some good references, a number of things I plan on looking into a bit more, but "not brain surgery". My rating for the book: somewhere between a C and a C-. The less you're comfortable with this stuff (and there are a lot of us who are skilled at one technology, like lists, trying to figure out the other ones -- in my case, I'm getting my hands around IRC right now), the more useful this book is. And if you already know everything, you don't need it at all, but who's in that category? Not me, that's for sure. For me, this is a good investigation-of-technology book, or a reference to hand to interested novices. I'll also likely use it as a convenient reference for their drafts of rules and etc. It's a book I'll keep on my shelves, but not on my desk. Good book, not great book. Not worth buying for any one technology, but if you're building a site melding a number of tools together, or trying to get a handle on running communities instead of lists, it can be useful. chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.
