EMFA: T1E7 - The Email Discussion List - Parsons

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Theme: Universal E-mail - Essay #7
Author: Ann K. Parsons
E-mail: akp@frontiernet.net


                    The Email Discussion List

A discussion of Universal Email would be less than complete if it
did not include the email discussion list.  As a member of the
volunteer administrative staff of the Human Services Resource
Center, currently based at St. Johns University, I'd like to
briefly address this issue.

for those of you who are unfamiliar with email discussion lists,
they are a means by which many people can participate in a topical
discussion using email.  Unlike the News Group, email discussion
lists must be subscribed to, and some of them are moderated.  This
means that the discussion on them is tightly controlled.  <smile> 
this EMFA list is an example of this type of list.

there are 750 lists on the St. Johns Listserver.  We have over
195,000 subscribers to our lists.  The lists on Maelstrom generate
the largest mail volume for any academic site and along with L-Soft
(the creator of Listserv) and Ziff-Davis (publisher of over 100
computer related periodicals) sends over 1 million messages per
day.  that is why I felt that it was necessary to speak out here. 
the force behind these lists and their creation is Dr. Robert
Zenhausern, professor of Psychology at St. Johns.  He initiated
this site in order to collect lists on the topics of:  psychology,
disability, education and community.  Our lists have become an
integral part of the lives of many persons.  Let me just illustrate
this by using two examples.  If you want to see a page of
testimonials on the effectiveness of these email lists, go to:

http://rdz.stjohns.edu/hsrc

choose the link to the testimonials page.

Example 1:  A mother in a rural area of Texas has a child who is
ill.  the doctors in her area are stumped as to the cause of the
child's illness.  the child is becoming sicker.  the mother logs
onto a discussion list for parents of children with special needs. 
she explains her problem.  A lady living in London England responds
with a series of questions about symptoms and the child's behavior. 
the mother in Texas replies with affirmative answers to all the,
"Does your child do X?  Does he do Y?  Does this happen when he
eats A?"  The lady in London comes back with, my child exhibits
those very things, and the doctors here say that he has disease J. 
Tell your doctor to look at Disease J.  Several days pass, but the
mother in Texas finally responds with an euphoric letter in which
she thanks the lady in London for her help, and that indeed her
child did have disease J.

Example 2:  Blind folks are able to exchange information on the
newest inventions in the world of adaptive technology.  These
people use the equipment.  they *know* what works and what doesn't. 
Advertisements and public relations hype about a given item can't
cut it when a user writes in and says, I can't get my computer to
work with program A, or I can't access web site B.  This is the
real thing, the current thing the living archive of information.

Hoping that this small contribution to your discussion about email
will focus on email lists at least for a little while for they are
one of the best uses of email that I have found, for they
concentrate information in one place, they can be archived for
later retrieval, and they can be a lifeline to many.

Ann K. Parsons,
Listowner, volunteer administrator

Rochester, NY, USA
716-244-0477
http://www.frontiernet.net/~akp
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