To continue with my message:
Some suggestions and considerations:
(1) Even in a relatively supportive culture, (some) members (can be old
or new) would still hesitate to ask questions about short-forms because
of many reasons, e.g., face-consciousness, fear of crowding other
people's mail boxes, fear of asking questions that have been asked
before, etc.
(2) Some members (xmca-subscribers) have expressed their wish to have
a less crowded mail box some time ago. Thier voices have not re-emerged
given the general xmca culture to support questions from all members (new
and old). That doesn't mean that their expectations are gone.. Some of
them may simply unsubscribe, some might feel that their voices don't
count in this culture;
(3) I like the supportive culture of xmca, but could also sense the
tensions between different expectations and considerations;
we do not live in an ideal world where one can find perfect solutions to
every problem, but still no harm trying to search for relatively optimal
practices; so, here are my suggestions (perhaps rather unbaked and naiive):
(i) To routinize questions about short-forms by using a stock subject
line, e.g, accronym query, to preface a simple question about accronyms,
and to describe this practice in the message to new members;
(ii) Subscribers who do not want to spend time reading these questions
can have a stock subject line to help them to screen messages in the
mail box;
(iii) the questions and answers can be collaboratively constructed by all
members who are willing to read and respond to messages under this stock
subject line; thus, it's an ongoing collaborative accronym list compiling
and revision effort;
My sense is that some simple routines that are legitimate (or have been
made legitimate by regular practice) can be a help to those who hesitate
or experienc obstacles in venturing out to write to xmca as a form of
participation (while listening and reading is another form of
participation too). We need multiple forms of participation, different
degrees of participation (e.g., some are too busy and want to read only
selected messages and want to have a quick way of screening messages for
their own purposes); we have to consider all these different constraints
and expectations in our search for relatively optimal practices that can
take into account different people's different voices or needs.
Oh, well, I hope this message is not another message that crowds your
mail box; if it is, I hope my subjcet line has been at leat relatively
informative so that you can spend little time in deciding to delete it or to
read on.
Cheers,
Angel
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Angel Lin
e-mail: enangel who-is-at cityu.edu.hk