And I'll come out of lurking myself to make maybe my first post to Webnet,
where I have happily lurked for years.
On the issue of political "netroots" websites, I disagree that the
posters, at least on the liberal sites, are more extreme that me as a
lurker. I find they pretty much reflect my feelings and opinions, it's
just that they are ready and willing to post quicker than I would be and
say it much better than I imagine I would.
When it comes to technological sites, it will often be clear to me that I
don't have enough grasp of the subject to post about it.As well as lack of
expertise, busyness is often a reason why I don't post, particularly
since I feel I don't have the time to frame my comments in a useful
manner.
But one of the main reasons, especially with large groups, is that all
groups, virtual and not, tend to get people who dig into leadership
positions and may not share well. New posters generally get ignored, if
not actively criticized if they haven't learned the finer points of the
group etiquette. The best groups for people like me are small ones, which
also periodically issue calls for self-introductions like "who are you",
"what brought you to our group" etc.
On the other hand, there is often good reason to discourage people who are
true beginners on a topic from posting too freely. There are cases where
it's better to have done your homework before you speak up. At that point
it seems best to have several forums, one for beginners, one for
experienced, or a forum that is more for "social" conversation as opposed
to technical. But if you can't be welcome to all comers, then at least
you should try to make it plain what level of expertise is expected and
where learners might go to find out more before posting.
Liz Ozselcuk (back to lurking because, while I love working on our
departmental webpages, I only do it in my spare time and really don't have
a lot of technical information to add to the conversation here!).
On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Sarah Jones wrote:
> As one of the lurkers, I found this article very interesting.
>
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
>
> Sarah
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:
>
> Webnet information is available at http://webnet.berkeley.edu. Email sent to this list is archived at http://ls.berkeley.edu/mail/webnet/ . This archive is open to the general public and browsable by search engine spiders, email-address harvesting robots, your bosses, etc.
>
#####################################################################
Liz Ozselcuk, Manager
elto_at_demog.berkeley.edu
Department of Demography
Graduate Group in Sociology and Demography
2232 Piedmont Avenue
UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 642-4529
#####################################################################
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:
Webnet information is available at http://webnet.berkeley.edu. Email sent to this list is archived at http://ls.berkeley.edu/mail/webnet/ . This archive is open to the general public and browsable by search engine spiders, email-address harvesting robots, your bosses, etc.
Received on Mon Oct 23 2006 - 16:41:27 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Oct 23 2006 - 16:41:27 PDT