Re: Future of the lists

I have very little skin in this game at the moment but I've remained 
subscribed by way of keeping an eye out for developments and 
opportunities to expand the work I'm doing now, which is focused on 
analog/modular. I'm also a member of the FaceBook group. I can't imagine 
one theme of this discussion won't be "to FB or not to FB."

As a personal matter, I spend as little time on FB as reasonably 
possible to keep up with friends, 'friends' and family. The professional 
groups I belong to are much less visited and far less useful to me 
except as notifications, signalers or links to other places. I think an 
email, list format is much more amenable to <eh-hem> substantive 
exchange, problem solving and learning. Not least because a mailing list 
is its own context and the data/information/content is not struggling 
against the overwhelming cognitive load, aka distraction, of the rest of 
what goes on around it, as it does, in my opinion, on FB.

That said, I sense this list has become sparser over the last 2 or 3 
years. As I say, I don't pay enough attention to FB to know if that is 
where the traffic has gone. Or whether the traffic has just decreased 
because of some sort of demographic shift, e.g., key expertise has moved 
on to new positions/challenges, new research areas, etc. But I'm not of 
the demographic that lives by the phone so I may be obsolete for 
meaningful input.

...edN


On 2021-05-19 12:09 p.m., [email protected] wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I’m afraid we need to have a discussion about the future of the 
> mailing lists. There are a number of issues, but the most immediate is 
> that the list archiving software is basically not up to modern 
> standards and is no longer maintained. It will need to be 
> decommissioned, and is unlikely to be immediately replaced as there’s 
> low usage for it.
>
> There is a broader question about the list software itself. That /is/ 
> likely to be replaced, and the replacement would offer an archiving 
> facility, though there is no clear timescale, and at the moment it’s 
> not a high priority.
>
> The existing archive can be easily converted to a static one, which 
> should be able to provide a better search facility than currently 
> (e.g. Google), so that should not be lost in any case.
>
> So I think the options are as follows:
>
> 1. Move the lists to another host. JISCmail may be a possibility.
> 2. Continue the lists and accept a gap in the archive, and hope that 
> the new hosting solution here will come sooner rather than later.
> 3. Wind up the lists after a quarter of a century, move all discussion 
> to other fora (e.g. scsynth.org <http://scsynth.org>), and finalise 
> the archive.
>
> I have my own views on this, partly for personal reasons, but I would 
> like to hear from others before I say anything. I know people have 
> strong feelings about lists vs. web fora, etc., and any choice will 
> definitely have plusses and minuses.
>
> Whatever happens, it’s been something of an honour looking after 
> sc-users and sc-dev for the last 13 years since we migrated them in 
> 2008. I’ve been really proud and happy that Birmingham has been able 
> to support so much amazing activity, and such a great community!
>
> Let me know what you think,
>
> Scott - list admin
>
>