Both appearance and disappearence of x-siblings//sublists has been by
"institutional" decision. Often there are collective discussions
beforehand, but Mike's institution is the one paying, right?
Then, scanning all that stuff over my screen in the process of coding, I
get a distinct sense that the introduction of the first x-siblings (xlit
and xclass) contributed strongly to the transformation of the xlists from
an electronic channel of contacts within an existing academic network to a
virtual forum in its own right. There's an old message by Mike (*somewhere*
in my electronic piles) making the observation that such a transformation
has taken place. Question is, as usual, where to draw the line in a fuzzy
object.
At 12.03 -0400 97-10-14, Eugene Matusov also wrote:
>It is also interesting to reflect of the phenomena of multiple simultaneous
>topics on xmca. Many of us coming from a Western tradition of "one nice
>well-defined topic at time" are often confused and want several separate
>forums (like x-lit or x-act). But it seems that alive discourse resists
>this tradition.
Yes indeed! I never cease marvelling at how topics run in parallel, and
then some inventive contributor pulls them together in one message. OR how
one topic by little steps and sudden quakes converts into another topic. I
suppose sometimes (and for some of us) this means straying off topic.
Again, my sense of the processes (from experience) is that this phenomenon
of flexibility has a fruitful capacity for the generation of meaning.
You know, Eugene, the bigger x-siblings, notably xclass-xedu and xact had a
lot of this multitopical character, even as separate forums. The other
x-siblings were simply... rather small and mostly very sleepy kids.
Eva