[governance] IGC profile: some handfuls of people and a curmudgeon?

[Meryem Marzouki]

I'm merging three questions (under three different subject lines).
As a general answer first: no one should take it personally. there  
are much more academics in the field who writes papers based on  
compiled statitics from this list (and others as well) than one might  
think. Furthermore, the comments and conclusions that could be  
inferred from these stats concern all of us as list members. There is  
no particular position here, and no particular interference, apart  
from strict technical management, from those who are list owners and/ 
moderators (being myself managing and moderating mailing lists, I  
know exactly what it means).

Now some specific answers, although I would have expected a  
discussion on what these data might mean for us all as list members  
and contributors, following Michael's question, rather than an  
unnecessary defensive attitude: no one is attacked here.

Le 1 oct. 10 à 20:20, Avri Doria a écrit :

> On 1 Oct 2010, at 12:06, Meryem Marzouki wrote:
>
>> My conclusion is that, far from being curmudgeonly as he warned  
>> this wasn't his intention, Michael raised a very legitimate and of  
>> utmost importance question. It probably deserves more serious  
>> thinking than what it got so far, but obviously only in case  
>> democratic participation is an issue..
>
> wow, that is loaded language.

Yes, it is. In line with Michael's question on openness and  
democratic participation (which is much more than reaching out), that  
I fully share. Either we care about this issue, and then we should  
discuss it serenely and whenever possible take action in thirs  
regard, or we don't and stay in this coziness (cet "entre-soi", as we  
say in French).

> Le 1 oct. 10 à 20:27, Avri Doria a écrit :
>>
>> On 1 Oct 2010, at 12:06, Meryem Marzouki wrote:
>>
>>> Since the list subscribers turnover is not available to simple  
>>> list subscribers like me,
>>
>> did you ever ask anyone?

No. And I mentioned this not as a recrimination, but as a point of  
methodological explanation.

>> while the mailing lists do not contain the historical data, as one  
>> of those maintaining the list I have been taking yearly snapshot  
>> of the membership just in case it was necessary to back-up the  
>> list at anypoint.

I would be interested in working on those. The number of lurkers --  
and if possible, the analysis of their motivations or non motivations  
-- always says a lot about a mailing list. But I've found - and I  
still find - it a bit tricky to ask, being at the same time a list  
member and a list "analyser". What I've observed is that the overall  
number of subscribers (which is available to all) doesn't seem to  
have increased a lot since the beginning. This from my remembering of  
the number I've seen each time I needed to go to the web interface of  
the list, but I haven't taken notes, though.

>> as for whether single list subscribers can get a list of all of  
>> the subscribers, that would be a privacy issue.

Having been on this list since its very starting point (or almost so,  
at least earlier than my analysis starting point by far: 2003 or so),  
I know this. One of the reasons why I haven't asked (no reason to  
give the information to me, and not to, say, other researchers  
willing to use the same data, or even the whole list membership).

> Le 1 oct. 10 à 20:28, Avri Doria a écrit :
>>
>> One question on your data, does it take into account the people  
>> who have changed their subscription address?

I worked on the email addresses. With some cleaning/corrections when  
I knew that it was the same person. But actually, this doesn't really  
matter when working on a sample of more than 13,000.


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