Hello Everybody - I am a very sporadic contributor to the MOQ, and I had to leave the MD due to the huge amount of email messages coming every day - I just don't have the time to read them all; it was just too much. I too was hoping that the focus group would be more manageable, but obviously it's not working. Marco, I think your suggestion might have merit for some, but it sounds a bit cumbersome to administrate. Is there some middle ground we could find between the discussion group and the focus group? Perhaps the focus group needs to have a more active moderator or a monthly discussion leader - perhaps the person who's topic is chosen could lead that month's discussion by summarizing, asking questions and directing the discussion. This might keep the topic alive for the month and end with some sort of conclusion being reached. To keep the discussions more relevant, perhaps the moderator could pull the topics to be voted on from topics that are running hot and heavy on the MD, with an invitation posted on the MD to participate in the MF for that topic. It seems we should be able to find some middle ground here.
Marty j. Marco wrote: Hi all, could be I'm going to be the last poster to this foum. :-( Jonathan is right. There must be a reason for this forum is "virtually dead". The moq Focus had the purpose to deepen and question a single point every month. It has worked for many months, then probably it has suffered the lack of conclusions (static latches). Not that MD is offering a lot of conclusions, but, in the end, MF is just less "free" than MD: it is moderated; the time that is necessary for a "question&answer" process is pretty long; we should stick to the thread; sometimes we arrive at the end of the month with a lot of arguments to close; sometimes, at the contrary, the discussion is virtually concluded after one or two weeks .... So, it would be good for the list to remove some of the rules, even if, on the other hand, it would be a nonsense to open another unmoderated list, exactly like MD. A "double forum" has a sense only if there are different purposes. So, given that MD is thriving, let's try to imagine if there is space for something else. So, here is my suggestion: Let's imagine you (if there's a You, outside there) have a particular thread you want to suggest to be questioned, with the purpose to come to a validated conclusion. 1) You have to search for other people interested to it (on MD, privately, or.... ) 2) When the number of interested people is enough (?) you will suggest the topic and the group of people to the committee (the current moderators team). They will possibly schedule the discussion for a date when all the group of people has the possibility to participate. 3) The announce of the new discussion will be delivered on MD. The group of people will be subscribed automatically to the list by the committee. Of course, other people could freely subscribe. 4) You will begin the discussion with a short essay introducing the thread. Since then, the discussion will begin unmoderated and will end when you will decide that a conclusion has been reached. 5) Possibly, you will condense the initial essay, a digest of the posts and the conclusion in a definitive essay to be published on the web site. This is actually he great difference with MD: the possibility to come to a positive conclusion (static latch). 6) After the end, the group will be unsubscribed by the committee. A new discussion can be now scheduled. In all that, the role of the committee should be to promote this kind of discussions looking for good threads on MD, instead of controlling all the single posts. The advantage I see is that few discussions of Quality will start with a reasonable possibility to have an active participation... Comments? Marco Jonathan wrote: Actually, it might be more useful to discuss WHY this forum is virtually dead while the unmoderated sister list is thriving - I believe that it has a lot to do with the whole relationship between dynamic and static. I sort of proposed this a discussion topic some months ago, but nobody picked up on it. IMHO, the division into two lists has been a failure. I would prefer that we try and get back to a single forum, as the Lila Squad once was. Jonathan Marco MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
