Re: how many professionals here?

[Peter Sheehan <sheehan@csd4.csd.uwm.edu>]

On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Phillip Bigelow wrote:

> 
> 
> 3) PaleoNet is another listserver that serves mainly the professional
> paleontological community (although anyone can presently subscribe).
> Recently, when the call-for-votes was posted on the Paleonet asking the
> subscribers whether they wanted posts from other paleolistservers to be 
> included
> on PaleoNet, most of the mail-traffic seemed to be against it.  Although
> there was a mixture of responses, the dominant one was that there was a lot
> of "amateur clutter" or "amateur noise" on the other paleo-listservers.  
> While I
> agree that noise does exist, the professional threads on PaleoNet can get a 
> bit
> long-winded, themselves, _without_ any input from curious amateurs. PaleoNet
> probably should be free from listserver-overload, but it would be better to
> refrain from self-imposed cloistering, particularly in light of the goals of
> the SVP Outreach Statement.  On the other hand, dinosaur@lepomis is
> 
There is a problem of traffic.  PaleoNet attracts a far larger audience 
than the members of SVP, so things can get very crowded.  We need a 
diversity of forums so that amateurs can be included, while others are 
more limited to the drab stuff that goes on between "professionals".  
Personally, I lurk on this list and only comment when my interests in 
extinctions and radiations come up.  But as more and more traffic appears 
I have less time to read most of the posts.  I think over the next few 
years we will see a huge increase in traffic as more professionals and 
amateurs become active on the net.