the decline of e-mail discussion groups

[langleymass]

Has anyone noticed a decline lately in the quality of e-mail discussion groups? Here's a case in point:

I am on a Yahoo group, and it "is dedicated to assisting local residents build personal and job seeking skills through education, networking and peer support." Basically, this is a networking group for the unemployed or underemployed. They also have real live meetings twice a month.

Trying to be the good samaritan, I would forward job ads to the list. After a while, I got a note from the mod telling me that people had complained about this. One person also complained about my posts on the list. It was rather surprising since this was supposedly a list for job seekers.

Yesterday, I attended the live meeting and then got a voice mail a few hours later from Jose (who had also attended the meeting) on my cell phone. I couldn't make out Jose's phone number in the message, so I sent an informational post to the list hoping to get contact information for him. Today, I got another complaint from the mod saying that people had complained about my comments in the group. Again it seemed strange since this is supposedly a networking group.

Am I getting older? Or does it appear that there are simply more and more smart alecks on e-mail discussion groups? It seems like anytime I post a simple request for information, I get one or two helpful responses and a bunch of smart-aleck comments.

I used to love discussion groups like this. Now I wonder I bother with them.

 

[BNPMike]

Who do I complain to about this thread??

 

[tfg13]

BNPMike,
FOFLMAO!!!!! So wrong, but hilarious.

langleymass,
I know your point. I think some of the members of these groups either find you a threat (you are finding these job listings and they are not), or, they "think" you are a spammer. Interesting thing that you point out is that you have gone to these live meetings, so that should tell them that you are real. The question I would pose to you is how many of these people have applied to those jobs, and/or were not "accepted" or their application was denied? Could that be the reason for complaints? How many of the people in the group are actually qualified for the job postings you put out there?

 

[langleymass]

There seems to be a new uptightness about e-mail. I think this is mainly due to the increase of spam. People seem to resent e-mail altogether and see any e-mail they don't like as "spam."

It isn't just this group either, but the group in question is a good example of how discussion groups have declined.

 

[dilettante]

I stumbled over a 2003 article at Intranet Journal It's Getting Crowded in Collaboration just the other day that your post brings to mind:

E-mail has indeed lost its luster. In far too many organizations e-mail has become a security nightmare. As far as collaborating on projects, the way e-mail handles attachments is not only inefficient, but it lacks real workflow and version control. Then, of course, there is spam, which has negated almost entirely the convenience of e-mail and made users more likely to miss messages. A Yahoo! Mail survey of nearly 28,000 Internet users revealed that 77 percent found it less aggravating to clean toilets than to wade through the junk messages in their e-mail. Enough said.

The trend in collaboration now is toward workspaces or teamspaces — the names often change, but the idea is the same. They are basically document repositories or file servers where all the content associated with various projects can be saved, discussed, passed around, and approved.

Emphasis mine. ;-)

I suspect spam and such are a big part of the problem, but sometimes even the volume of "legit" email traffic becomes a burden. Some people using email-oriented tools like that one at Yahoo have their options set so every post results in a separate email sent to them instead of having alerts grouped up for daily/weekly emailing. That can make you crazy too, but it's your own fault if you choose this.

I'm involved in an effort being driven from a customer's side by an over-communicator. We've ended up with a "one email per day" rule because it got so bad. The rule was really made just for one person. It became clear there was no talking to her to help her understand that 10 blasts of email a day (often with multiple, sometimes conflicting and sometimes contradictory attachments) was driving people nuts.

But email aside... I do suspect that broad collaboration workspaces such as globally available Internet forum sites aren't what they used to be. Lately here at Tek-Tips as well as other sites things seem to have slowed down a lot in terms of meaningful postings.

I may be biased because the jobs outlook (for any jobs) in my own region continues to worsen, but I suspect people get the feeling they no longer want to help the offshore/nearshore people who "stole" their job for 1/2 the pay. Yet I hear that elsewhere things are picking up, so it can't just be that.

 

[Dimandja]

I too have experienced that phenomenon langleymass, on my "unemployed, underemployed" Yahoo group. I was able to narrow down the reasons some people react so negatively to my helpful messages.

1. When they see my name, they automatically assume I am Indian and therefore a threat.
2. When they see that I am referring them to potentially good jobs, they assume that I am comfortably working and this is my way of thumbing the nose at them.
3. When my post is anything else than a job posting, they get infuriated at my "chit-chat" messages.

There are a lot of knuckleheads out there.


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Try forum1391 for lively discussions

 

[BocaBurger]

They seem to be spending way too much time on the computer. If they were out actually looking for work, they wouldn't have time for the BS.



BocaBurger
<===========================||////////////////|0
The pen is mightier than the sword, but the sword hurts more!

 

[langleymass]

I agree that "e-mail has lost its luster." I remember back when I logged onto CompuServe for the first time in late 1995. I was so fascinated by this new communication medium. I still remember my address (it was all numbers) and my password.

A few weeks later, I joined my first discussion group. I also remember that back then, you could actually get a list of all the group's subscribers and their addresses. It was a fun way to look up old friends. You can't do that now because groups like this because the first resource for spammers.

Back in the spring of 1997, I adopted the eight-hour rule. I did this because I had a very heavy e-mail correspondence with a woman I liked very much. Then, the correspondence declined rather abruptly and ended. Ultimately, this happened because we were responding immediately and out of anger. I sometimes call it "The Melissa Rule."

I have definitely found that an e-mail can be very different when you read it the second time after letting it set for some time. Because of the eight-hour rule, I often end up deciding that some things just aren't worth a response. Over the years, people have actually complimented me on how "nice" I am in e-mail.

Another change I have noticed about groups is that if I sent out something to a group that someone didn't like, the person would write me directly. Now, it seems that everyone just runs like a little child to the list moderator.

 

[GwydionM]

E-mail is wonderfully simply and neat, for most people. It also allows pushy people to bombard you with rubbish. A small 'e-mail stamp' would have kept things under control. But the industry has a libertarian ideology and when it wasn't their money, they hoped the problem would cure itself without extra controls. Which has utterly failed to happen.

Now we are dependent on professional forums to keep the forum worth reading. A lot of possibilities have been lost.

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[langleymass]

I don't think professional forums serve the purpose. The best groups I have been on are the ones with narrow focuses.

I have been on groups for Exim and Hylafax. Exim is a Linux-based mail transfer agent. Hylafax is fax software for Linux. Both were good. But general Linux lists aren't as good, mainly because the general becomes much too general.

People were talking about an "e-mail stamp" years ago. There is no need to bring up an idea which has already been so throughly discredited.

 

[Sympology]

I guess, much of what happens in a group is downto your own postings and attitudes.
This site is actually one of the best, but even I've had a go at a couple of mods because they pulled a thread that they didn't agree with (it would help if they actually read the article)
I've found stuff in here that I would never find anywhere else, Symposium Call Centre being the best for me (it's a Telecoms thing). If you help people, they tend to help you.
The problem with some of these groups is you can get a genuine plea for help, you send a link and then a mod takes offence for you "advertising"
Part of the issue is moderators have odd concept of spam.
Spam is simply unsolicited mail. Full Stop.
If someone requests help locating a product and I reply with a couple of websites selling that item, it is not spam, but help. I don't work in sales and this shows in my profile and postings, so why the heck would I advertise?

Rant Over...must be a bad day today....

stu..

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[langleymass]

This site seems okay enough, but I am talking mainly about e-mail discussion groups (not boards). The main problem with the forums is you often get people who "talk just to hear themselves."

 

[Dimandja]

I moderate a forum on this site (History), and I Have my share of run-ins with people having certain expectations from it.

In any discussion group, you'll invariably find people who "don't get it" so to speak. Trying to deal with it is like walking on thin ice. You don't know whether the person does not have good English skills, or, for that matter, whether you yourself understood their messages well. This type of situation does contribute to degrading discussion groups.

I think the reason this site is so successful is that the premise has been narrowed down to where there is little room left for misunderstanding: ask a question, get an expert advice.

__________________________________________
Try forum1391 for lively discussions

 

[langleymass]

I think people have developed a different attitude toward e-mail, and it doesn't necessarily extend to boards. I think telemarketers have caused a decline in phone courtesy. I also think that spam has caused a decline in e-mail courtesy. It seems as though nowadays, people call any e-mail they don't like "spam." Lists also have an unfortunate tendency to drift into anything.

 

[Onyxpurr]

Okay, perhaps you can help me out here.

I do get spam, but I also have an anti-spam software (Norton, I believe) that works pretty well. Other than that, I just delete the emails that I don't recognize. This takes me about 5 minutes each day to sort stuff out from two accounts.

Is 5 minutes too much to ask for to sort through? It takes me less time to sort through e-mail spam than junk mail.

It's certainly not fun to do, but not really aggravating in any way.

Am I missing something??

I still enjoy email immensely. I use it for a lot of correspondance because I can get it from anywhere (even my cell phone now) and retrieve it on my time (as opposed to phone calls) I can skim the email instead of reading it entirely if I choose (like voice mail) and decide to delete it mostly from the subject or from address (unlike voice mail) and it takes me relatively no time to organize and sort through (unlike smail mail or voice mail).

???

 

[chiph]

5 minutes isn't too bad.

At my last company, they had corporate spam filters installed, and the IT staff reported that they were filtering out over 100,000 pieces of spam each month (for a 300-person firm).

Chip H.


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[Castor66]

OFF-TOPIC

We get SOOOOOOO much spam and email-borne viruses. From my anti-spam server I can see that since 01-Feb-05 we have filtered out 34,212 spam messages and 25,034 email-borne viruses! That is from a company that has 35 people working for it! It's going down now. In the last hour we only got 45 spam and 6 viruses!!!

 

[Onyxpurr]

Yeah, I'd say my spam filter catches about 20-30 spam mail a day, at least. And then I have about 5-6 I have to mark as spam manually.

Then in my yahoo account I get about 60-70 spam per day that the spam filter catches and about 3 I have to manually tag as spam mail. This all takes me about 5-10 minutes a day to organize and review.

 

[beanbrain]

I think I'd rather deal with spam than clean a toilet thank you very much.

 

[Vanine]

StuReeves wrote:
"Spam is simply unsolicited mail. Full Stop."
Yeeah. The problem is what was solicited.

I am unemployed and I registered in some database. Have I asked them to send me hundreds of impersonal Emails that doesn't have anything to do with my qualifications, objectives and that never receives any feedback to my response.

They are using database to send Email according query without evem looking at whom they are sending.

Only once I got a response demanding from me to get back my spam report explaing that he did send only 66 Emails according to database query!

Look at the last one to me (*), they are all the same. Can you understand which country the job or job agency in? Can you understand if they look locally or worlwide' Can you guess if I have got response on my Email to it back? Have I solicited for such kind Emails (They are rather e-news)? No!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is just spam. When I register for in job-seeking databases, I even do not give my valid Email. Phone to me if you really want to communicate and personally with me.

(*)
The full text of the last Email to me with job
"Good Afternoon,

Can you help?

We have a requirement for a C#, ASP.NET developer with SQL SERVER skills. You must have a minimum of 3years commercial experience of working within this environment. You will be working on a variation of projects.

This is an ideal role for someone who is looking for a long-term contract or even a permanent opportunity.

If you want to be considered for this role please send in a copy of your most up to date cv.

Regards
Vipula Patel
MadisonBlack