"It is conceivable that there is some kind of fixed
probability for messages to be inactivated by being
buried under later postings, and with an increasing
mailflow it simply takes fewer days for this to
happen." (1999, p. 21 of 31)
and "The workload of maintaining an overview of the
whole discussion grows past individual and collective
capacity." (1999, p. 15 of 31)
I highlighted both of these findings in my copy of
your 1999 paper because it relates to my own interest
in human juggling. Here's a fascinating case where
someone has taken into account the collective
resources and distributed cognition and now we're
bumping into some limits that I find interesting.
To get back to Eugene's analogy: On a fairly regular
basis, I have small group discussions in my ESL
classes. This should redistribute turn-taking and
participation-possibilities, and lead to all those
wonderful student turns that whole-class activities
fail to support. But those wonderful student turns
are rarely recovered for the whole class. We teachers
have developed a whole arsenal of tweaking & recovery,
but nevertheless, student turns can easily be "buried
under" an avalance of student "postings" when about
nine groups of four/five (my current class size) come
to life. Similarly, I don't think the electronic floor
is as limitless as it appears at first, seductively ...
genevieve
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