[Wikipedia-l] I like BBS:es

Wed May 7 18:05:19 UTC 2003

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Well, not to be too me-centric, but I know that if there's a BBS I
>will look at it sometimes, out of a sense of responsibility for the
>project, but I'm not likely to "live" there in the same way that I
>"live" on the mailing list, if you see what I mean.
>
>So if important policy discussions were to take place there, I'd miss
>them all completely.
>
When our lives are busy most of us do the same thing.  It already takes 
a fair chunk of time to go through what comes in on the mailing list.  I 
have instant opinions on a lot of them but no time to respond fairly. 
 Last summer Larry had sent out a few thought provoking comments, but 
responding to that type of thing requires careful consideration, so I 
stick them on the "to do" stack.  They're still there, but many more 
things have been pushed onto the stack since then.  By the time I get to 
them they will be so dated as to be meaningless to everybody else.  On 
the other hand the innumerable comments about the new fashions that Lir 
is wearing in the police line-up don't last very long.

Where we put things on the spectrum is a measure of importance to us. 
 Active mailing list participation is a symptom of acute Wikipediholism, 
but even the most addicted among us would balk at the idea of receiving 
a separate eMail for every Recent Change that appears on the 'pedia :-( .

I belong to a few other mailing lists, but I've demoted them to digest 
format.  I skim rapidly though them for anything really interesting, but 
mostly I just delete.  

Puting things on a BBS would be a further demotion, because I would only 
look at them when I had a lot of time.  50 messages a day = 1,500 
messages a month.  Yes a lot of lot of time!  ... and this is a list 
where spam appears only rarely.  

Ec