Just curious...

[jjjjjuliep]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "Kelley" <kelleythompson at g...> 
wrote:

> I'm wondering -- how many folks here also own / mod / help run a 
> Yahoo group?  Or used to?  I know plenty have and do; just
> wondering if there's a significant number of 'mods' here on 
> Feedback, I suppose in comparison to the proportion on the main
> list.

I'm an owner and/or moderator on 2 Yahoo groups, but they are very 
small private groups where we really don't need to do any admin stuff 
and we don't have any formal guidelines.

I also a list owner of a 10-11 year old mailing list run on the 
majordomo list software which has approximately 400 members.  On this 
list I do take an active admin role, and have created a set of 
guidelines.  It's a different situation vis-a-vis the HPFGU list as 
the previous list owner did absolutely nothing about behavior or 
guidelines, so my attempt to impose order is slow progress indeed.

> Also curious, in how many groups are people here typically active? 
> I mean, I belong to a jillion, but am only really active / actively 
> lurk on about a dozen or so.

I am probably active in about 4 or 5 mailing lists and 1 USENET 
newsgroup, due to limited time (for example, I'm about 45 digests 
behind in HPFGU as I've been on vacation for most of the last 10 
days! ;-) ).
 
> What's sparked my curiosity is that I belong to a few groups 
> specifically for people who mod Yahoo groups, for the sharing of 
> info, advice, etc.  One group in particular (well organized,
> tightly run, very active) sends out their group rules in a file the
> same way we do the HBF, and it's unbelievable how similar the rules
> are to ours.  I mean *stunningly* similar.  They state straight out
> that they do not copyright the wording of their rules, and in fact
> they encourage folks to lift them directly for use in their own
> groups, so I'll upload a copy here for any who are interested.

Thanks for doing so--I've read them and they're actually very similar 
to the ones I have for my group (which I lifted from another group 
I'm on).  I'm not surprised by the overlap--I think the problems list 
owners/moderators face are pretty much universal:  how to keep the 
list on-topic, pleasant, and easy to read so as to invite discussion.
 
> The basic sentiments seem to boil down to how easy or not is it to 
> determine who said what, that people hate trying to decipher the
> out of control chevrons/carets (whatever people call them -- >, >>,
> > > >, etc.) and that no one likes to wade through loads of text
> they've already read to see a one-line response.  (There are
> probably other general consensus thoughts; those are just the ones
> occurring to me now.)

I say this with a good deal of humility, as I'm a very new member to 
HPFGU, but what has struck me about that list is the incredible 
amount of posts with very involved quoting.  I've never seen a list 
where so many quotes from so many other people are regularly 
consolidated into responses.  Has this always been a feature of the 
culture of this list?  I will admit it's quite daunting to me to read 
a long post which quotes the arguments of several different people, 
instead of just replying to one (or maybe two) people.

Thanks!

jujube