Is It Just Me? (Cont.)

[elfundeb2]

I think there may be some hope that list volume will become more 
manageable within the foreseeable future.

On June 21, we had approximately 7700 members on the main list.  
There are now, less than 2 months later, something like 10,600 
members.  The rate of joining, and the rate of posting in that time 
has been beyond all our wildest speculations.

In the first week after OOP came out, we had over 100 members joining 
every day.  That amount slowly declined to an average of about 50 per 
day, which held steady for awhile.  Now, with summer winding down, 
the numbers have declined further, so for the last week or we've 
averaged 25 new members per day.

Why is this relevant?  The typical posting pattern seems to be that 
many active new members join and within a few days become quite 
active in posting.  The majority of these members slow down their 
posting rate to a trickle very quickly, so the ripple effect of our 
current lower join rates may be felt on the list soon.

There's also the fact that OOP release coincided with the onset of 
summer, when many people are on vacation from school and have more 
free time to surf the internet and find, join and start posting to 
HPFGU.  And new members are most likely to start out with questions 
we've already heard before and that old members don't want to discuss 
anymore.  IIRC, it was also true last summer that a large number of 
newcomers dominated the posting on the list, and our favorite posters 
were fairly quiet.  When fall arrived, and work and school got back 
into full swing many of the summer joiners quieted down, but the old 
regulars returned.  I'm hoping that the same will happen this fall.  

I agree 100% with Abigail's point on how best to maintain quality on 
the list:

> So post.  Don't be afraid that someone's said the same thing 
> already - they have.  And not just over the last seven weeks but 
> over the last three years.  How many times have we told 
> newbies that they shouldn't be afraid to suggest an oft-repeated 
> topic, because there are always new angles and new readers?  
> That's still the case.  I'm sure everyone on this thread has a lot 
to 
> say, and I know that I'm looking forward to reading it.  I can't be 
> the only one who scans the list for her favorite posters, because 
> I know that those posters can be relied on to provide consistently 
> high quality.  If you post, others will respond, and some of them 
> will be inspired to raise the quality of their discussion.
> 
> What makes HPfGU a great place to discuss Harry Potter is not 
> that there are moderators around to discourage low-brow 
> discussions, but that there are great people who encourage 
> high-brow ones.
> 
> Post, people.
> 
And this is also the reason why I personally don't think a second 
list is a good idea.  I believe the best way to encourage new members 
to post the way we want them to is to set the standard ourselves; new 
members' first impression of what the group expects is formed by the 
recent posts they read.  A newbie list isn't going to be able to 
maintain the standard.  Also, to me it's not very welcoming to shunt 
newbies off to a second-string list while the really good discussion 
is taking place on a list where they have no voice.  

It's a daunting task to read through the main list these days.  Yes, 
there are posts out there with very poor form (and they're not all 
from the 3000 most recent members).  But I also always find 
intelligent and insightful posts written newbies that we would not 
read if their contributions were shunted off to another list.  

Debbie