[Xmca-l] Re: Changing Practices at XMCA

[Greg Mcverry]

The problem is (any many of my professional organizations) these listserves
work.

Yet all of the naming conventions folks are suggesting, the addition of
newcomer pages, the CHAT wiki, sounds like XMCA outgrew the affordances of
listserves quite some time ago....yet it works so well.

I just completed (well parts of) connectedcourses.net and they used a
wordpress site (which would be for the newcomer page and the wiki) and rss
feed (we should encourage longer posts on our own publishing platform) and
discourse ( a stackable email like discussion board that will push to
social media or email).

It might be an interesting model to examine. I especially like the idea of
encouraging the longer form writing to happen on personal blogs and then
everyone pushing their content into the different XMCA channels.

On Sat Dec 13 2014 at 1:39:30 PM HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:

> I especially like Helena’s first suggestion on streamlining the chat: Keep
> it short. When someone has something longer to say, could that be an
> attachment? I mean something short of a full-blown, peer-juried
> publication, but still coherent and well thought out.
> Henry
>
> > On Dec 12, 2014, at 2:49 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I have two suggestions for changing practices, along with subject lines
> that accurately track a thread.
> >
> > 1. Messages no more than two screens long. One is preferred.
> >
> > 2. No more individually addressed messages. As in, "Tom, you said X" or
> "Melissa, you have misunderstood my point."   Refer to an individual by
> quoting or citing, but speak to the list.
> >
> > Both of these may not qualify as "modest." I can defend each one, but
> will first wait for the *&^&*storm, if one is coming.
> >
> > Thanks --
> >
> > Helena
> > :)
> >
> > Helena Worthen
> > helenaworthen@gmail.com
> >
> > On Dec 12, 2014, at 11:43 AM, mike cole wrote:
> >
> >> Dear xmca0philes
> >> My most recent note, regarding discussion of sociocritical theory via
> >> Kris's RRQ paper, ​indicates part of my effort to implement modest
> changes
> >> in the organization of xmca discourse aimed at improving its usefulness
> and
> >> attractiveness to people (the two being mixed).
> >>
> >> At the most minimum level, ​we can reduce some sources of
> misunderstanding
> >> and discoordination by declaring a distinct header for any topic anyone
> >> wants to discuss concerning culture and development in their broadest
> >> contexts. No guarantee ever that anyone will respond, let alone set off
> a
> >> stream of responses. But at least we can keep sequence in the threads
> >> consistent, and they will be easy to retrieve as a set from the
> archiving
> >> web page should one want to.
> >>
> >> There are no policepersons in this process. (But so far as I can tell,
> no
> >> harm in nagging).
> >>
> >> Other modifications in the structure of the discourse are possible. It
> >> would be nice to know, for example, how many people actually read xmca
> from
> >> time to time in some form, and how many of our 800+ subscribers have
> xmca
> >> in their span filters. About 200 people people have posted in the past
> >> year. Bruce and I are working on a non-obtrusive way of checking to see
> how
> >> many silent folks are lurking out of interest and how many are zombies.
> >>
> >> Early on Annalisa suggested a sort of "Beginner's Manual" which seemed
> like
> >> a good idea, but it requires some coordinated person power. A group to
> >> create such a facility is in the process of formation, and I figure
> there
> >> should be more about that appearing.
> >>
> >> A year or more ago Andy and Huw put together a wiki that I think of
> >> (perhaps inappropriately) as a kind of "key word wiki" for CHAT.
> >> It exists, although it is in quarantine at present to insure that it
> will
> >> never carry any viruses into the UCSD campus. This seems like
> >> a natural part of the xmca pool of resources, and may be useful to the
> >> newbiies' materials.
> >>
> >> We have looked into forums and other media for xmca, but so far as I can
> >> tell, there is no general purpose utility that would not require the
> >> involvement of significantly more coordinated person power, and probably
> >> customizing, et that LCHC can manage. Perhaps I am wrong about this and
> the
> >> new, great, effortless substitute is at your nearest supermarket.
> However,
> >> for the moment, we will continue working within the fungible, but
> perhaps
> >> not entirely elastic, structure of xmca.
> >>
> >> Now, back to the thread I want to address,
> >> Imagination
> >> mike
> >>
> >> --
> >> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal with a natural science with an
> >> object that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
> >
> >
>
>
>