[AktiviX] Admin

[Paul M]

On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 10:40, Josh Robinson wrote:
> > other opinions?
> 
> well, i use either pine or mulberry, so it's fairly easy for me to address
> a mail to whoever i want. teh downside of not munging headers is that when
> i wish to reply to the list, teh two pauls (in this case) will each get
> two copies of the mail.

This feature is definitely broken :(  Despite setting my mailman options
to receive two replies I am only getting the one addressed to me not the
list version. This is having a bad knock on effect, at this end at
least. I filter all my mailing lists into separate folders (I'm on about
16 at the mo and they are impossible to read otherwise) and not getting
the list version is screwing up the threading, since it doesn't appear
in the correct folder  - forcing me to copy replies into the correct
folder manually. As an added bonus the List Post header doesn't get set,
which breaks reply to list, the thing I actually want to do, forcing me
to hand address my mails as well (and is non RFC 2369 3.4 compliant to
boot). 

Though I suspect this is probably an old and boring topic for many
people, since I so foolishly started off this thread (and so innocently
too) I feel I should at least offer some reasoning for my request (as I
should have done in the first place).
 
Quibbles about the extra workload aside, I actively dislike getting
getting off-list replies (regardless of whether there is also an on-list
reply) and am none to keen on mailing lists where this is a default
behaviour. For me, its not really about the technical issues but how you
see a mailing list as a social space.

 I do not see a mailing list as a series of overlapping conversations
between individuals which are only co-incidentally held in public but as
something akin to the online equivalent of the off line meeting(though I
accept there are lists that probably do fit the former definition). Thus
when I write something to a list I see myself as speaking in a public
forum, addressing the participants collectively. Similarly when I reply
to someone  on a list I do not see myself as replying to them as an
individual, but as replying to the arguments they have made.

The problem I perceive with setting reply to the individual as a default
(and putting reply to the group only as an adjunct to this) is that it
valorizes individual communication over the collective. While this might
not seem much in itself I do think that there is a danger of slippage
into an online equivalent of one of the most pernicious (and recurrent)
problems facing the movement.

 If we see a mailing list as a meeting, then, the problem I see is that
they might come to resemble  those meetings that are only on the surface
open and democratic but in reality are a private conversation between a
self-defining inner core. This is a problem that has arisen and been
confronted time and again, certainly since Jo Freeman's classic essay on
the subject 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness' was published in 1970
addressing the subject in the early feminist movement. (It is available
online at http://flag.blackened.net/af/online/tyranny.html with Cathy
Levine's reply 'The Tyranny of Tyranny') [1].

I realise I am over-egging the argument somewhat (so say the least -
though its true that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance) and
there cannot be a technical fix to the problems of direct democracy any
more than you can force participation (or people to read mail). But I do
think a relatively small change can help shift the onus so that the
question is not do you wish to address the group but why do you not? And
if this makes it slightly more difficult to reply to individuals then
that is only as it should be. 

Paul M

 

[1] For those with an interest in early radical history its worth noting
that the London Correspondence Society adopted a structure specifically
designed to enable participation by its new, but largely unschooled,
members, constantly devolving to a local level by seeding groups based
upon smaller and smaller geographical divisions as it grew. (though this
presented problems of itself) - See Andrew Rose's 'The Intellectual
History of the British Working Class". (should be required reading if
you don't know it.)