Wizzy
:roll:
Subj: Swapmeet Pete, September 2002
Date: 17/09/02 19:21:50 GMT Daylight Time
From: mollymo@ntlworld.com (Mark Nolan)
Reply-to: mollymo@ntlworld.com (Mark Nolan)
To: swapmeetpete@hotmail.com
The Joy of Groups
Way back in the late nineties, soon after his office got themselves online,
John the collector had an idea. Using the cc button on his email program, he
started an informal round-robin email group. Soon he had five collectors of
a similar bent on the list. Every time one of them had a thought or a
question, they would send it to all the others. It worked well until one of
them changed his email address. After much fiddling, John got the group back
on track with a definitive list and took the opportunity to add a few new
members.
Everything went fine until one of the members decided he was getting too
much email, and the discussions weren’t really addressing his interests. But
even though he mailed the group asking to be removed, some of the members
were too busy or didn’t know how to remove his address, so the emails kept
on coming. At the same time one of the new members complained that he wasn’t
getting all the correspondence. John, who by now had become John the
moderator, realised that even a small group could easily become
unmanageable. It was obvious that some external control was needed.
Then along came a site called eGroups. Using a simple web interface, John
was able to name his group and set up a central mailing point, which took
care of the list and distributed the emails. Now his group members were able
to sign up, change their details or leave the group altogether, without any
work on John’s part. Naturally, as the instigator of the group, he kept a
fatherly eye on the proceedings.
As the services matured, sign-up boxes for John’s egroup appeared on a few
collecting sites, encouraging more participants from across the world. The
web-based egroup site evolved to offer a searchable archive of all the
emails the group had sent each other. From then on, anyone who asked a
question which had already had a thorough airing was directed towards the
archive.
The group members were pleased to find they could store pictures and build
up a page of favourite links. They also had access to an electronic diary
which sent out automated reminders about fairs and meetings. Although rarely
used, there was even a facility to vote on mini-surveys or set up
conferences. All this was free. But the best aspect was the way the
individual members could choose how to interact with the group. They could
receive emails individually as they were sent; they could get them once a
day in a compilation, or they could just visit the web site when they felt
like it, to catch up on any interesting topics.
The beauty of this elegant service, scaleable enough to cater for anything
from a dispersed family to an entire football supporters club, did not go
unnoticed by Yahoo! who bought eGroups and renamed it Yahoo Groups at
http://groups.yahoo.com. Little else changed apart from the number of
exclamation marks, although the users started finding advertisements
appended to their missives, and the web site became a bit less intuitive.
By now the group had several hundred members and a momentum of its own. Many
of the recent joiners had no idea who started the group, and cared even
less. The international nature of the group meant that occasionally some
cultural misunderstandings occurred. Often it was an attempt at humour which
got taken the wrong way. Other times there would be a complaint that someone
's contribution was off topic and should be addressed to a different egroup.
Each argument would generate a hailstorm of hurt emails, followed by further
mail saying let’s stop bickering and get back to talking about collecting.
There were some high profile defections and splinter groups formed, which
diluted the quality of the original group.
John the moderator was quite upset by the virulence of the arguments raging
around his once cosy group. At first he tried to calm things down by
restating the group’s objectives, and he went as far as banning some of
those responsible for the infighting. The majority of the participants
stayed quiet and read what interested them, deleting the rest. Eventually
John realised his baby had grown up and now existed completely independently
of its founder. So, using the cc button on his email he quietly wrote to a
few of his closest contacts and started an informal round-robin email group.
Soon he had five collectors of a similar bent on the list.
swapmeetpete@hotmail.com
http://www.albawhistles.com To much of the stuff for you <>
[ This Message was edited by: wizzy on 2002-09-15 11:18 ]
[ This Message was edited by: wizzy on 2002-09-18 03:40 ]
