From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Wed Oct 30 05:30:46 2002
Subject:Re: Digest Number 876

Hi Bob,

> Sorry that I suggested something that goes against the charter. I got
>carried away with the novelty of communicating with folks from all over the
>world and wanted them to feel free to jump in. If anyone has some sites that
>are a bit more open to what I have described above please let me know.
>(Privately would be prudent.) I will still continue my membership here but I
>guess we've been invited to take our bullshitting elsewhere, maybe starting
>at NAMM in January. That's fair enough in my book. Thanks for the
>reclarification of the charter Bruce. It's your baby and you call the shots,
>I can respect that. OHF Bob

Thanks for being understanding. Just for the record, it WAS my baby, but as some so aptly put it, it is now Eric's "teenager," and he calls the shots. I simply jumped in as an opinionated soul, as promised in my parting letter. A list can always change its direction, but as Eric said: To be fair, it would probably require a formal change to both the charter and the name.

There's nothing wrong with a social or philosophical list, but it takes extra "bandwidth" to participate. This group normally has 10-30 emails a day; maybe 40-50 if the topics are lively. Change it to an anything-musical-goes list, and the traffic can jump to 100-200 per day. To some members, that's a great thing; to others, it probably exceeds their ability to keep up. The traditional low "noise level" of the CWSG allows even busy members to participate; raise that noise, and some of them would have to bow out. Some of the most likely to be left in the dust would be vendor reps, dealers, and techs, which would hurt the quality of the list, IMHO.

I'll give you an example: I own a Nissan Maxima, and joined the Yahoo list of the same topic to find out how to fix a particular problem I had. I found several helpful members who solved my problem, but the list is something of a social club for ~1/4 of the members, and so traffic is high and filled with one-line replies. After a week of 150 Maxima emails per day, I dropped off the list. Every time I work on the car I wish I was still a member, but I don't have time to wade through all of the traffic to find the items that might interest me. I think the other 3/4 of that list get less out of membership than they could, not to mention the 100's (1,000's?) of past and potential members who stay away because of the email volume.

Just my $0.02 ...

Regards,

-BW

--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™ http://consult.ashbysolutions.com
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@ashbysolutions.com