Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community

Subject: Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community
From: Greg Holmes <greg -dot- holmes -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 09:06:27 -0400


Al Geist wrote:

>While some have focused on "stewardship", building
>and running the list is a business.

So successful lists don't exist that aren't run
as a business? News to me.

>TECHWR-L on the surface looked like a magnanimous gift
>by the Rays to the Technical Writing community, but
>behind the scenes it was a real business with all
>the costs and problems of a real business. If it
>wasn't run like one, it would have died long ago.

I participate in plenty of lists that aren't run
like a business, at least not as far as the
community is concerned. In the case of Yahoo
Groups, Yahoo runs the hosting, bandwidth, ads
etc. as a business, but the moderation and actual
content (the discussion by members) aren't really
part of that.

>The Rays haven't made it complicated. Go out an
>try to buy any business and see if the discussion
>does not involve costs, "tools", etc.

My point was merely that if the goal is to keep the
list going, the idea of using a Yahoo Group is not
absurd at all. If there are other goals involved,
then that changes things.

Ad-supported web sites and lists may have
become a low margin commodity - hard to make
a go of yourself at the nuts and bolts level, but
cheap or free to make use of to further discussion
and community (which are the main goal?).

Greg Holmes

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl

WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT: New! Document review system for Word and FrameMaker
authors. Automatic browser-based drafts with unlimited reviewers. Full
online discussions -- no Web server needed! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.



Previous by Author: Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community
Next by Author: Re: Followup on FM 7.1 and AutoCAD files
Previous by Thread: Re: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community
Next by Thread: RE: ADMIN: An Open Letter to the TECHWR-L Community


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads