Theos-Talk Archives (November 1997 Message tt00059)

MKR:

>I am sure that the issues that have was discussed in Eldon's msg, would have
>come up in other lists, many of which have a much larger circulation and
>much higher traffic.

The issues are the same with the various lists. How the lists fare
depend upon the people subscribed and how they interact. That
interaction cannot be predicted nor controlled too tightly or the
spontaneity and energy of the list may be harmed. I can see a
distinct personality to each of the different lists, and what I
want to write would lead me to decide one list over another at
times. (My writing, though, has been temporarily stunted for the
past few months, as I go through the demanding task of retraining
my fingers to type on the Dvorak keyboard, giving up a lifetime of
QWERTY typing behind.)

>If anyone has seen how various situations have been managed by the other
>lists, it may avoid re-inventing the wheel.

I've seen them on several lists. How things work out, though,
is a cooperative task undertaken by the current participants
on a list. A list is a community and it needs to sort out its
nature.

>BTW, theos-l, TI-L and the associated lists have had much higher volume of
>traffic and no one at any time considered doing anything with the traffic,
>subject, number of msgs etc. etc. and they are still humming well.

I've watched the other lists, and for a number of years been quite
active on theos-l, from September 1993 until the last year or two.
Initially on theos-l there were many complaints about people posting
too many messages. Several subscribers were on Compuserve at the
time and had to pay per-message charges for reading the postings.

There have been a number of phases on theos-l. The first several
years had nearly all messages being substantial, often like short
articles. Then came a phase there it became more of a chatline, with
a majority of messages consisting of one and two line comments
and smalltalk between a small number of new people, often highly
critical of others that they did not agree with. There were some
discussions that escalated into bloodbaths and much bitterness,
and THEOSOPHY WORLD was started after a particular bitter one,
where theos-l lost about 1/3 of its subscribers. The theos-l list
has a high turnover, but seems to have held steady at about
120 to 130 subscribers over the past year or two.

The ti-l list has fairly low volume, perhaps lower that theos-talk's
slow periods. Many of its postings are new member announcements.
It's a different group of people. In fact, there's surprisingly little
overlap between theos-l, ti-l, theos-buds, and theos-talk.

>Lastly, as for the cost of running this maillist, is any organization and/or
>its leaders are directly or indirectly providing any financial or other
>support? Just curious.

There's no financial assistance from anyone. As to support, any
occasional mention of THEOSOPHY WORLD, should it happen, in any
publication, is always appreciated.