Theos-Talk Archives (August 1998 Message tt00000)

Estrella:

One quick comment:

>theos-talk ... is just TOO much for me to read

In maintaining theos-talk and THEOSOPHY WORLD, I've
noticed and heard a number of comments regarding how
things are working. Many people cannot deal with the
large volume of email, since they don't frequently
check their email, or feel bad about deleting messages
they don't carefully read, or haven't been able to
take advantage of using filters in their email programs
to set aside the mailing list messages from the others
that they get.

There are different things that people are getting
out of the lists, and their use of the lists therefore
varies. Some use it as a hang out to be with friends.
Others use it as a soapbox to broadcast their personal
ideas. Still others use it for an interchange of ideas,
or an opportunity to ask questions and learn from
others.

The percentages tend to show the relative interests:

    . 69 percent -- THEOSOPHY WORLD only
    .  8 percent -- theos-talk digest version
    . 23 percent -- theos-talk regular version

There's a definite demand for materials that have been
sifted through, standardized in format, and somewhat
predictable in size and frequency.

Perhaps some of the people who dropped off of the mailing
list might have stayed around if we cut down on the
volume, were more careful in trimming out lengthy quotes,
more thoughtful in replies, and so forth. It's hard to
say, but something to keep in mind.

I remember the early days of the theos-l mailing list,
in the fall of 1993, when John Mead was writing asking us
to not write so much because every message we were writing
was costing people money to read -- some were on Compuserve
which was charging a per-message fee at the time. Things
have improved since then; email is basically free for most,
if not everyone. The only cost to people now is one of
time. Everything we write is making a demand on the
time of others. Hopefully we can benefit others by our
communications ... something we know in our hearts when
we're writing something, where there's a good feeling
inside and a sense of having created something of merit,
after having written something, the opposite feeling of
"yuck" or a sense of dullness, or a "so what" sense of
indifference that might come from having written something
of little value.

Looking forward to reading postings of great value,

-- Eldon