Thought this might interest some.
FROM: GTD_PALM
Brent Chapman, who wrote Majordomo [a mailing list server for newsgroups],
wrote the following essay of interest in 1995.
Essay: The Life Cycle of a List
"Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
-
Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves and gush a lot about how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).
-
Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list and brainstorm recruitment strategies).
-
Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthly threads develop, occacional off-topic threads pop up).
-
Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone – newbie and expert alike-- feels comfortable asking questions,suggesting answer, and
sharing opinions). -
Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increase dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining about the signal-to-noice ration; person 1 threatens to quit if other people don’t limit discussion to person 1’s pet topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 and 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads tna is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
-
(a) Smug complancency and stagnation (the pursists flame everyone who asks an “old” question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously
congratulating each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).
OR
(b) Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people wear out their second or third “delete” key, but the list lives contentedly every after)."