[Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment

Fri Feb 5 16:57:00 EST 2010

It's actually a good thing that most subscribers are not active posters! If every Web4Lib subscriber contributed just two postings per week, we'd have to wade through maybe 4,000-5,000 postings per week. People would be unsubscribing like crazy. :-)

Bernie Sloan

--- On Fri, 2/5/10, Gair Helfrich <ghelfrich at aclsys.org> wrote:

From: Gair Helfrich <ghelfrich at aclsys.org>
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment
To: "B.G. Sloan" <bgsloan2 at yahoo.com>, "web4lib at webjunction.org" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 2:31 PM

Bernie,

This individual who sits in the wings and does very little posting very much appreciates those who post frequently. I've learned a lot through the generosity of the "mega-posters" who take the time from their day to share their knowledge  and answer our questions.  So, thank you one and all!

Gair
__________
Gair Helfrich, MLS
Supervising Librarian
Information and Technical Services Manager
Atlantic County Library
40 Farragut Avenue
Mays Landing, NJ 08330
609-625-2776 ext. 6313  Fax: 609-625-8143
ghelfrich at acmail.aclink.org

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 12:52 PM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment

Bill Drew says: "Please don't let a few complaints from a small number of people change the dynamics on this list."

Actually, the dynamics of the list are *created* by the relatively small number of people who post to the list. Here's something I wrote about Web4Lib in a 2006 article in the Journal of Library Administration:

"Active posters are what make the list tick, and they provide the list with its personality, for better or for worse. I recently studied almost seven years of posting history (April 1995-January 2002) for the Web4Lib list to determine which people were the most active posters. Over that time frame, nearly 6,500 subscribers posted at least one message to the list (i.e., this does not include subscribers who have never posted to the list). One percent of these subscribers accounted for 25 percent of the messages posted to the list. The top twenty-five posters, representing only one half of one percent of the number of posters, accounted for 22 percent of the total messages sent. Nearly 90 percent of the subscribers who posted at least one message posted ten or fewer messages over the course of those seven years. Nearly 60 percent posted only one message during that time frame. The median number of postings was two, or about one every 3.5 years, and the
mean was 6.36, or less than one per year. This data shows that a relatively small number of subscribers account for a significant amount of list traffic, and that the vast majority of subscribers post infrequently, if at all."

Bernie Sloan

--- On Tue, 2/2/10, Wilfred Drew <DrewW at tc3.edu> wrote:

From: Wilfred Drew <DrewW at tc3.edu>
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment
To: "web4lib" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 10:52 AM

Please don't let a few complaints from a small number of people change the dynamics on this list.  This list does not belong to just a few people. It belongs to the entire subscriber community.

-----------------------------------------
Wilfred (Bill) Drew, M.S., B.S., A.S.
Assistant Professor
Librarian, Systems and Tech Services
Strengths: Ideation, Input, Learner, Command, Analytical
E-mail: dreww at tc3.edu
Follow the library: http://twitter.com/TC3Library 
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail or document.

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Walt Crawford
Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 10:38 AM
To: Andrew Hankinson
Cc: web4lib
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment

I feel the need to offer two comments:

1. There is no such thing as a weekly digest of Cites & Insights emails.
Cites & Insights is a monthly ejournal (sometimes slightly more than
monthly), and I *currently* send an announcement of each issue to Web4Lib.
It's not at all an aggregation of blog posts. (Andrew may be thinking of
Current Cites--but, in fact, that's also monthly and not a "digest" or
aggregation of blog posts.)

2. Since there's a dislike for announcements--one I partially share--I'll
remove Web4Lib from the monthly announcement list. If you want to be
informed of new issues of Cites & Insights, sign up for my blog (Walt at
Random, http://walt.lishost.org) or the single-purpose announcement blog
(C&I Alerts, http://cical.blogspot.com). I was going to *ask* whether I
should remove the Web4Lib announcement, but it's probably the right thing to
do.

-walt crawford-

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 7:11 AM, Andrew Hankinson <andrew.hankinson at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Agreed. "Just use the delete key" isn't a real solution. Maybe Gerry could
> aggregate his blog posts and send a digest out weekly, similar to the
> "Cites
> & Insights" e-mails.
>
> Gerry: would that be an acceptable compromise?
>
> -Andrew
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 8:53 AM, Matthew Zimmerman <
> Matthew.Zimmerman at utsouthwestern.edu> wrote:
>
> > >From a constructive criticism point of view, I would read your emails or
> > blog posts more often Gerry if there wasn't such information overload.
> Like
> > others, I get your updates each day, sometimes multiple times a day from
> at
> > least three different sources (this list, my Facebook email, and my gmail
> > account which receives updates from Facebook). Sadly I just ignore them
> now,
> > perhaps to my loss, but when you see so many updates it becomes white
> noise.
> >
> >
> >
> > Matthew Zimmerman
> > Manager
> > Digital Services and Technology Planning
> > UT Southwestern Medical Center Library
> > Tel: 214-648-4873
> >
> > matthew.zimmerman at utsouthwestern.edu
> > www.utsouthwestern.edu/library
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web4lib mailing list
> > Web4lib at webjunction.org
> > http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/ 
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/ 
>
>
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