The nature of Iris-L

TOPIC ONE: "Getting Out of Hand"

Clarence writes

|HTolly is right.....this affair is really getting out of hand, and is
|confusing. I would suggest that the list serve be used for telling about
|interests, establishing contacts, and asking questions....Some answers to
|questions could be answered thru listserv, but many might best be directed to
|the individual asking only.  If listserv is used to carry on individual
|correspondence it is going to be impossible to read my mail every day....

This may be clarified by the response I just posted to Harriet's message.

But a few comments are in order.

Those coming to this list from the iris world, rather than the internet
world, may not be too familiar with internet mailing lists. There are
thousands of these lists running, on almost every imaginable topic.
They are generally open to all, and generally encourage free-form
discussion. There may be some topics that only a few list members
comment on, and there may be others that involve many people. However,
anything that pertains even losely to the topic of the list is
considered suitable for posting.

This can indeed lead to a high volume of mail. The "gardens" mailing
list sees hundreds (yes, hundreds) of postings daily. I belong to a
list for copy editors, which sees a similar volume of mail. That's
right: when I come to work in the morning, there are usually 100-200
messages in my inbox. How is it possible to deal with all that?

The answer: the delete key. You look at the subject line of each
message and decide whether it interests you. In about 10 minutes,
I've pruned my inbox down to about 10-20 messages, which I glance
through, read, or perhaps reply to.

In other words, limiting the volume of mail on a mailing list is
best done at the receiving end, not the sending end.

As I implied in an earlier post, daily discussion on irises may
not be for everybody, even devoted irisarians. But it _is_ what this
list is for.

TOPIC TWO: The AIS and Iris-L

Most of us subscribers are apparently members of the American Iris
Society, which is not altogether surprising. However, it should be
noted that this list is not presently associated with the AIS in
any way. If it grows, AIS members may even be a minority in a few
months.

I intend to post information on iris societies to this list at
regular intervals. Those of us who are iris society members obviously
benefit from that membership, and like to encourage other iris lovers
to join.

However, let's also do our best to make non-members feel welcome here.
This is a public mailing list, not a private club. Certainly nothing
has been said so far on this list that would make non-members feel
unwelcome, but I get the sense that some of us may be assuming that
subscribers to this list are AIS members. I just want to make it
clear that 'taint necessarily so, and we should keep that in mind
when we write.

Thanks all. I hope this clarifies some things. It'll take a few
weeks for this list to develop its own "culture". We're in a
formative period, and it's nice to see we're discussing some of
these issues at the outset.

Comments!

Happy irising, Tom.



Tom Tadfor Little         tlittle@lanl.gov  -or-  telp@Rt66.com
technical writer/editor   Los Alamos National Laboratory

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