What's happening?

[Mikey Brass]

This board has been as dead as a dodo, for a month.

[lagarvelho]

Mike:

This board has been as dead as a dodo, for a month.

So you noticed the "dead air" too.  I was beginning to wonder if I was missing something.  And I've checked this board religiously every day.
Anne G

[Daryl Habel]

Mike:

This board has been as dead as a dodo, for a month.

So you noticed the "dead air" too.  I was beginning to wonder if I was missing something.  And I've checked this board religiously every day.
Anne G

So have I.  I have no news, but my theory is everyone is waiting for the journal.  I have no knowledge of progress, or lack thereof, on that subject, either.
Dar

[lagarvelho]

Dar and Mike:
[

So have I.  I have no news, but my theory is everyone is waiting for the journal.  I have no knowledge of progress, or lack thereof, on that subject, either.

Ummmmm. . . .wasn't the journal supposed to start in the middle of December?  OTOH, if you haven't heard anything, well, that must mean *something*!
Anne G

[rich]

Today I was going to post just to see if my browser was working but I am as guilty as anyone in not posting for a while. Yes also waiting for the journal. hope we all had a mega festive season.
Happy new year to all,
Regards, Rich

[Forum Administrator]

We apologize for the silence and delay with regards to the inaugural issue. Unfortunately programing delays have obliged us to slightly postpone.

A more detailed answer will follow shortly...
Thank you all for your continuing interest!


Palanth Admin.

[colin]

Hi all
Well at least the silence is broken and people are still out there. My worry was that with such a long pause people would eventually stop visiting the site.
Cheers
Colin

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Dear All,

First things first. A Very Good and Happy 2003 to all the members of the PALANTH - Forum and, particularly, to those of you who have shown some concern about its lengthy, over-the-Holiday-Season's silence.

Our dedicated PALANTH Administrator has already provided you -- with reference to the Inaugural Issue – with the perfect excuse. Who can argue with “programming difficulties”! To this can be added a number of other “growth” problems that will be briefly mentioned in our first Editorial. All this to say that in order to be a good demonstration of what the Journal is to be, the Inaugural Issue had to be postponed. It will be online in about two weeks from now. As for the first regular issue (Vol. 1, No. 1), it is already in the works and will come out in March.

Finally, I would like to say that -- as already clearly stated by Mark Twain -- the suggestion that the Forum has already suffered, from an evolutionary point-of-view, the Dodo’s demise, is grossly exaggerated.

And with a note to the effect that the life of the Forum can only be a reflection of that of its participants, I wish you all, again,

My very best,

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[Mikey Brass]

Finally, I would like to say that -- as already clearly stated by Mark Twain -- the suggestion that the Forum has already suffered, from an evolutionary point-of-view, the Dodo’s demise, is grossly exaggerated.

And with a note to the effect that the life of the Forum can only be a reflection of that of its participants, I wish you all, again,

It's a shocker that I am the 6th best poster with only 26 posts, out of over 120 registered board members.

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

<snip>

And with a note to the effect that the life of the Forum can only be a reflection of that of its participants, I wish you all, again,

It's a shocker that I am the 6th best poster with only 26 posts, out of over 120 registered board members.

Yes. Quite amazing, is it not? Needless to say, suggestions on how to change for the better what is a rather unhealthy participants-to-lurkers ratio would be much appreciated.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[lagarvelho]

Jacques, Mike, and all:

Yes. Quite amazing, is it not? Needless to say, suggestions on how to change for the better what is a rather unhealthy participants-to-lurkers ratio would be much appreciated.

Just out of curiosity, I checked my status, and discovered I'm #10.  But then, I try to only post when I have something of reasonable importance to say.  Which brings me to the lurkers.  I suspect a lot of people here just think they "don't have the knowledge", and feel "stupid" if they participate.  This might not change by much in the coming months, but I wonder if periodic encouragement to ask questions of the professionals(or anyone else with whatever knowledge may be sought)might help.  Also, of course, there is "advertising"  I'm now on a list that might get a few more "voluble" people to join and get into the "conversation".
Anne G

P.S., no, not palanthsci, although many of the people there are pretty knowledgeable, too.

[abazagaroth]

Message boards are probably the worst possible format for a serious discussion group. There isn't much that can be done to get a niche topic (anthropology related fields) to thrive in such a format.

CDK

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Message boards are probably the worst possible format for a serious discussion group. There isn't much that can be done to get a niche topic (anthropology related fields) to thrive in such a format.

CDK

You may or may not recall that this particular issue was extensively discussed, early on, when the decision was taken to go ahead with the creation of the PALANTH - Forum. I believe I made clear, at the time, that the main reason behind our decision to use the present "message board" format was a financial one. Media5, the small outfit that deals with the technical aspects of this show was not in a position to absorb the cost additional programming required to add an email access component to the package. Fully aware of the fact that this would cut us off from a more or less important segment of potential contributors, we nevertheless felt that the formula being put into place was likely to attract the interest of a broad audience. I think it has, and I view the recent month-long lull as an annoying, but not overly dramatic "incident de parcours", of a kind that has also be known to occur in other "lists" that use more user/access-friendly formats. In other words, the PALANTH - Forum is fully entitled to its own moment of quiescence. Not only does this greatly reduce the noise but, especially given the time of the year, it can be conducive to renewed serious and useful reflexion on this whole exciting exercise.

At any rate, thanks for making good use of this "worst possible format" in order to pass on, in a twelfth message, some of your own thoughts on this important topic. And I can assure you that the format in question could, despite its obvious shortcomings, allow you to come up with contributions of a more palaeoanthropological nature.

Jacques Cinq-Mars

Jacques Cinq-Mars

[abazagaroth]

There is no reason for becoming melodramatic. The question put forth in this thread was "why?" the forum was not being utilized to anywhere near the extent palanth-l had been in the past. I gave an answer. Message boards are not a particularly viable form of communication outside of the high traffic topics like videogames, music, politics, etc. Anthropology and its related disciplines is not a high traffic topic, and likely won't ever be.

The lack of moderation access to palanth-l as a consequence of Yahoo!'s incompetence or apathy aside, a much more viable option would have simply to place ample notice in messages to the group (as was done with the creation of this forum) about a change to a new group. That would have given all the moderation access back, moved all the contributing members of the list to the new list, and wouldn't have resulted in the death of a reasonably function communication format for paleoanthropological discussions. A message board simply doesn't work. My website has had over 100000 visitors in about 3 years, and a message board didn't work. The old Human Origins site's message board never went anywhere, with a couple posts every few weeks, half of which were from Anne G.

Financial considerations themselves would point to just creating a new yahoo.group, though I know the visceral dislike of the admins of palanth.com for that particular company. However, just look at the "traffic" this board has had after weeks of notices on planth-l, and compare that to the traffic planth-l originally had in either its first incarnation, or the revamped version that went live in april 99. It is a functionality issue, and an ease of use issue.

I'm sorry if giving you the reason for the failure of this forum (and regardless of what you would like to be the case, this forum is fast going the route of many other message boards, newsgroups, etc, dedicated to anthropological subdisciplines: complete lack of use), particularly when you take out the admins, Mikey, Anne, and Daryl out of the picture, you have almost nothing going on here, I've somehow offended. And a 6-10 person chat board isn't the purpose of this board is it?

I would contribute something of a "more paleoanthropological nature" but have seen nothing I felt interested in contributing. Crossposting discussions already aggravated me with all the yahoo.groups, so I won't do so here, and nothing really in my realm of interest that piqued any thoughts from me. A few posts of articles, someone posting half a chapter from a book, someone posting a review of an article I agree with; well, not much to comment on there.

I read these forums. I registered here soon after palanth officially "died". I simply finally found a topic I felt like contributing to, in order to give you an explanation why it wasn't going as hoped.

C. David Kreger
http://www.modernhumanorigins.com

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

Jacques, Mike, and all:

<snip>

Just out of curiosity, I checked my status, and discovered I'm #10.  But then, I try to only post when I have something of reasonable importance to say.  Which brings me to the lurkers.  I suspect a lot of people here just think they "don't have the knowledge", and feel "stupid" if they participate.  This might not change by much in the coming months, but I wonder if periodic encouragement to ask questions of the professionals(or anyone else with whatever knowledge may be sought)might help.  Also, of course, there is "advertising"  I'm now on a list that might get a few more "voluble" people to join and get into the "conversation".
Anne G

P.S., no, not palanthsci, although many of the people there are pretty knowledgeable, too.

Dear Anne,

Thanks for the comments. As ever your, your enthusiastic support is appreciated. As for the coming months, well, there is likely to be some stimulating developments. You, and all other interested parties, will be kept informed.

My best,

Jacques Cinq-Mars