One more drop in the flood of meta-discussion....
 
As has been noted already, many of the current "growing-pains" of
MUSEUM-L are caused by our large number of relatively inexperienced
subscribers.  We museum-folks have not been on the Net as long as the
university community, and it shows.  Fortunately, ignorance is a curable
condition.  Most people respond well to a polite, off-list message
that points out their error and provides the information they need to
prevent repeating it.
 
I'm a listowner on three lists, one of them quite large.  That list
is run by a "listowners' council" of about a dozen people, who
rotate active duty in two-week shifts.  The listowner-on-duty
(colloquially called the "Solomon-of-the-day" or SOD) handles error
messages, replies to subscriber queries, posts informational notes
to the list when required, composes polite (i.e. no "Have a nice
day, moron") notes to the inadvertent net-sinners, and generally
handles all matters that the LISTSERV program cannot.  The listowners
communicate through a private mailing list, which is the owner of
the public list; this allows any member of the council to interact
with the LISTSERV as listowner.  If anyone is interested in the
technical details, please contact me privately.
 
We have found this arrangement to be very effective in communicating
an atmosphere of competent civility to our subscribers, who now do
an excellent job of policing list tone and content without much
interference from the listowners.  I believe that a similar arrangement
would work well with MUSEUM-L.  It is a lot of work, to be sure, but
with multiple listowners the duties are not onerous, and one soon
creates a nice library of boilerplate text to handle most situations.
If Dr. Chadwick were to solicit volunteers to be co-listowners, he
would soon have a large and enthusiastic committee of helpers.
 
It has been suggested that Reply-To: be set to the individual rather
than the list; in the case of a large, active list such as MUSEUM-L
this is probably a good idea, but it will drive people using PROFS/
OfficeVision (with PUMP) -- a population that includes most of the
Smithsonian subscribers -- to distraction, because our mailers will
then ask us whether we want to register each and every separate
address for possible reply.  Other mailers may work the same way.
This may not be an adequate reason to leave Reply-To: to the list
at large, but it probably should be considered before that decision
is made.
 
There has been some discussion about splitting the list; given the
size of the current subscribership, this is probably not a bad idea.
I have seen an assertion that any electronic community of more than
200 people tends to split into separate groups.  In my experience, this
is accurate.  Groups with similar interests tend to identify themselves
and wander off to form new lists.  This is not altogether a bad thing;
people who share the interests of both groups can subscribe to both,
while those who focus on only one aspect are not troubled with extra
correspondence.  My own sense is that we could support a separate
"museum computerization" group (perhaps under the auspices of MCN?)
and a Registrar's group dedicated to collection-related matters.
 
We have already seen a partition of our audience with AAT-L, CIDOC-L,
and the collection managers' list.  Subject-specific lists such as
AEROSP-L also deal with museum-related topics.  Net-culture evolves
rapidly, and part of Net-literacy is recognizing the nature of the
virtual community.  It may not be ideal, but it's what we have.
 
And for those who learn to swim in its complex currents, it can be
quite glorious.
 
       +------------------------------+------------------------+
       |  Barbara Weitbrecht          |  [log in to unmask]  |
       |  National Air & Space Museum |  [log in to unmask]       |
       |  Smithsonian Institution     |  (202) 357-4162        |
       +------------------------------+------------------------+