SOC: Life Cycle of Mailing Lists

July 16, 2000

The Natural Life Cycle Of Mailing Lists

Kat Nagel (KatNagel@...) sent this terrific piece to the EARLY-M

mailing list in December 1994. It is the best description of the social

development of a mailing list I've read.

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Every list seems to go through the same cycle:

1. Initial enthusiasm (people introduce themselves, and gush a lot about how

wonderful it is to find kindred souls).

2. Evangelism (people moan about how few folks are posting to the list, and

brainstorm recruitment strategies)

..

3. Growth (more and more people join, more and more lengthy threads develop,

occasional off-topic threads pop up).

4. Community (lots of threads, some more relevant than others; lots of

information and advice is exchanged; experts help other experts as well as

less experienced colleagues; friendships develop; people tease each other;

newcomers are welcomed with generosity and patience; everyone -- newbie and

expert alike -- feels comfortable asking questions, suggesting answers, and

sharing opinions).

5. Discomfort with diversity (the number of messages increases dramatically;

not every thread is fascinating to every reader; people start complaining

about the signal-to-noise ratio; person 1 threatens to quit if *other* people

don't limit discussion to person 1's pet topic; person 2 agrees with person

1; person 3 tells 1 & 2 to lighten up; more bandwidth is wasted complaining

about off-topic threads than is used for the threads themselves; everyone

gets annoyed).

6. Finally:

1. Smug complacency and stagnation (the purists flame everyone who asks an

'old' question or responds with humor to a serious post; newbies are

rebuffed; traffic drops to a doze-producing level of a few minor issues; all

interesting discussions happen by private email and are limited to a few

participants; the purists spend lots of time self-righteously congratulating

each other on keeping off-topic threads off the list).

OR

2. Maturity (a few people quit in a huff; the rest of the participants stay

near stage 4, with stage 5 popping up briefly every few weeks; many people

wear out their second or third 'delete' key, but the list lives contentedly

ever after).

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