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[OFF TOPIC] Re: Will someone rid me of this troublesome priest!?
Hi everyone,
It seems that the Linux-IL group and mailing list has entered a new phase
of its life.
On Mon, 13 May 1996, Marc A. Volovic wrote:
[... snipped ...]
> > If you sufferd from child abuse please find yourself a psychotherapist - don't use
> > this mailing list as an outlet for your consequent aggressions, in what seems like
> > the transcripts of a coprolalia patient's monologue.
>
> Do make your lines shorter, eh. As for my psychotherapy - ten years of
> aversion therapy backfired and I am now, more than ever, a pugnacious
> bastard.
>
> At least, you did not accuse me of coprophilia.
[... snipped ...]
I apologize for my lack of fluency in Latin, which forces me to resort to
more primitive and blunt words.
First of all, it seems that the group entered phase 5 of the natural life
cycle of mailing lists (see below). One of the characteristics of this
phase is that some participants wake up and notice the smell of the shit
of other participants. They do not have the enlightened attitude of
letting people shit in peace and accuse their fellows of coprophiliac
tendencies and make all sorts of threats in an attempt to dispell the smell.
Eventually, the more sensitive people will leave and the others will
continue to live, and live also with that smelly part of life.
(Yeechhhh!)
--- Omer
The natural life cycle of mailing lists
---------------------------------------
Every list seems to go through the same cycle:
1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about
how wonderful it is to find kindred souls).
2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list,
and brainstorm recruitment strategies).
3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads
develop, occasional off-topic threads pop up).
4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of
information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as
well as less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease
each other; newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience;
everyone -- newbie and expert alike -- feels comfortable asking
questions, suggesting answers, and sharing opinions).
5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases
dramatically; not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people
start complaining about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens
to quit if *other* people don't limit discussion to person 1's pet
topic; person 2 agrees with person 1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten
up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining about off-topic threads than
is used for the threads themselves; everyone gets annoyed).
6a. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks
an 'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies
are rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor
issues; all interesting discussions happen by private email and are
limited to a few participants; the purists spend lots of time
self-righteously congratulating each other on keeping off-topic
threads off the list).
OR
6b. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants
stay near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks;
many people wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list
lives contentedly ever after).
This pattern is typical of that outlined in group formational stage theory.
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