>- Why should Parkinsn grow as fast as Internet ? Maybe we have reached
>maturity with 1500 members.
Because as the Internet community grows, you would expect the number of
people on the Internet and interested in Parkinson's to also grow
proportionately.
(well, probably quicker, given the increase in Internet users is probably
coming from consumers, and the incidence of PD is probably going to be
higher amongst the general public than amongst single techie males who were
the first users of the Internet :-)
Therefore I believe that there is an increase in the number of
PD-interested people on the Internet.
If there are an increasing number of PD-interested people on the Internet,
but membership of PARKINSN is static, it means that either:
- they don't want to join the Internet-based PD community, or
- we are doing something wrong, and the community we have isn't
attractive enough.
I would say that we want the Internet-based Parkinson's community to be
large - as large as possible, because:
- being a member of this community helps people individually
- it makes organising ourselves easier (e.g. Udall bill efforts)
- the more members a community has, generally the healthier it is
I would suggest that the amount of traffic on the PARKINSN list is
intimidating, and that people who could benefit from being on the list
aren't, because there's just too much to wade through. These people aren't
easily reachable, and we've lost touch with them.
(for information, the PARKINSN list is the highest traffic list I am on -
and I would think that the members of the list are the least able to deal
with large amounts of material. I'm on about 20 techie lists, and they all
split way before this amount of traffic)
The way to get over this is to split the community into sub-groups - and
you can joing whichever groups you want to. This happens in the national
socieities (Young onset groups, local branches, etc), and it also happens
in other Internet communities.
To give you an example, in the Mac world we have lots of lists:
- hardware
- software
- communications
- particular software packages
- beating Apple up
- etc.
All of these have moderate traffic levels, a clear focus, and a large
membership.
The result of this is that one mailing list has 40,000 members, with a few
messages a day. That list can organise themselves and have a good few
thousand mail messages in a journalist's mail box in less than a day. Don't
you wish you could do that for Parkinson's? Wouldn't that make the Udall
bill that much easier to lobby for?
With one or two large lists, someone has to spend a fortune hosting it
(thanks Uni. of Toronto!), and we all have to wade through huge amounts of
stuff.
With lots of low-traffic lists, I can subscribe to the ones I am interested
in. I can put my feet into the water gently. I only read what I want to
read. I don't get deluged with 50 mails a day.
Lots of small lists is scaleable. A few large ones aren't. The Internet is
going to scale, probably beyond our widest dreams. We can plan for that
increase, and it will be to the benefit of a larger number of people. Or we
can stay the way we are, and stay the way we are :-(
[would like to write more but I've got to rush for a meeting. I've probably
ranted too much anyway. Sorry.... I just want to see a really successful,
international community on the Internet, and I'm worried the wheels will
come off before we do it]
Simon
--------- My opinions are my own, NIP's opinions are theirs ----------
Simon J. Coles Email: [log in to unmask]
New Information Paradigms Work Phone: +44 1344 778783
http://www.nipltd.com/ Work Fax: +44 1344 772510
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