At 17.50 -0700 01-08-13, Bill Barowy scrobe:
>I don't make this reference casually. There are aspects of the common
>space of
>xmca, that exchanges take up, that are very similar to the human
>consumption of
>other renewable resources.
Let me see, Bill.
The distribution pattern of postings over contributors, as we have charted
it, is pretty unshakeable (here and elsewhere) - even as particular people
migrate between slots, viewed over a longer period. And this pattern that
persists can be described as fitting a Zipf distribution - EXCEPT for the
few heaviest contributors, who post less (a LOT less) than Zipf would
predict. Since I don't know what other models math would have to offer,
it's good enough for me to describe the pattern as Zipf with an important
modification.
What you are saying is that this pattern indicates that we are dealing with
a system of "consumption of renewable resources". The question becomes:
what ARE these resources. Time? Or some more intangible matter of social
practice? Or...
Really, the strange thing is that these exchanges DO show properties of a
system with limited renewable resources - considering how electronic group
communication is often supposed to remove a lot of the constraints that
keep people from speaking in face-to-face group discussions (like the
cultural bias against more than one person speaking at the same time - an
Argentinian friend of mine finds Swedish seminars utterly alien and stiff
because of this).
cheers
Eva
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:08 PDT