Thanks, Abbas, for being blunt. Please continue to be so. We obviously need that.
Oliver (aka BT) _____ From: Abbas Mahmood [mailto:abbas...@hotmail.com] Sent: 27 March 2012 11:44 To: Wikimedia Kenya Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Kenya] thank you Sorry for being blunt :-| I have heard lots of complaints about this mailing list from both local chapter members, Wikipedia editors, and the wider Wikimedia community. Phoebe once mentioned something about mailing lists that I believe is worth sharing: One point that I have thought about, and talked about privately with some of you, is (particularly on a list like this) how much time -- how many person-hours -- is spent on each email. An email list where the entire staff and chapters officers are subscribed means that each email is read by a few hundred people, many of whom are getting paid and/or who have serious institutional responsibilities. So even if a long mail only takes 5 minutes to read, parse and think about, how many person-hours (and in turn donor dollars, lost productivity, or time taken from other things) are being spent? Let's be optimistic and assume that any given email is only read by *half* the list. 5 minutes x 100 people = 500 minutes / 60 = 8.3 hours. So one full workday -- 8 hours of our collective time -- for each long email. That is a heavy burden to ask of ourselves, and a heavy responsibility on those of us (like me!!!) who go on at length in their mails! Being the admin of this list, I have seen soooo many people unsubscribe to this list, mostly because they have found it nonconstructive and lots of lip-service going on. So people can be free to post whatever they want on this mailing list, but that doesn't mean that we are free from the repercussions of what we say. The consequence of this being a list that is ignored, or people unsubscribe, or even get added to a kill file. So we can therefore continue on as we are, and reap whatever the results of that are or individuals can choose to self-moderate. The choice is yours! Abbas.
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