Re: nettime: let's switch to news with the name.space

[Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>]

dear nettimers, 

[first an errata, the IRC event is this Friday the 21. 20.00 GMT !]
                                                    ^
i got several mails after the little intervention while almost
90% has been positive.

Robert, as the name.space thread began to become an issue we thought
it would be good to do an xtra irc discussion for. the logfiles will
get reedited and sent to the participants for annotations to create
a 'vivid' nettime document which compiles the different perspectives
for those which do not want to follow every new msg. Let's see.

But you point out a general problem. There might be an interest
to go more into detail, and criticize or contextualize a specific
contribution on nettime, if it is just to make an additional comment
or 'write onto the margins' of other documents. If one message leads
to a public dialogue under the same subject, we speak about a thread.
In my opinion and experience nettime never had threads longer then two
or three msgs, the rest may disappear in private dialogue. I hope that
lots of Nettimers communicate with each other privatly. This kind of
'collusion' can give the flow of content a higher social consistency.
On the other hand there might be broader interest on nettime to openly
discuss 'off the list' and not private and form longer threads. But i
think this is nothing for the 'main channel', if we set a maximum of
around five msg per day, while two should be the average. (a rule of
thumb i got from the RRE list which got it from a FAQ)

There are three possibilities:

a) we restart a nettime-talk-list for free un/subscription. 
b) we expand and get more serious with the usenet-channel.
c) we do both and combine newsgroup and talk-list.

hm, if you want to take part in the decision process or if you have
another idea, please mailme. you can also join the discussion at
alt.config now. All this is part of the 'reform process' which you 
should participate in.

here's what Erik Davis wrote.

><
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:59:17 -0800
To: owner-nettime-l@Desk.nl
From: figment@sirius.com (Erik Davis)
Subject: Re: nettime: let's switch to news with the name.space thread


In arguing for the continuance of the name-space thread on nettime, rax wrote


>In spite of the highly personal style of the mail this discussion has been
>very interesting because of the way it operates on the borders of commerce,
>anarchy, art, the military, the domination of the Net by U.S.American
>interests (and law) - and much more.
>
>Paul Garrin claims that his project is an artwork (among many other things).
>This is extremely important - especially in respect to Nettime's stated aims
>of promoting  >net criticism,  collaborative text filtering and cultural
>politics<.
>
>This discussion may be uninteresting to the text-oriented professional
>writer/academic but to Nettimers struggling with the problem of
>imagining ways to operate creatively - and critically - in the
>dematerialised environment of the Internet, Garrin's project is very
>important.
>
As a text-oriented professional writer on cyberculture -- and a
"U.S.American" as well -- I am amused by the notion that I and others of my
ilk are not struggling to "imagine ways to operate creatively -- and
critically" in the Net. I also must admit smirking a bit at the argument
that Garrin's project should be treated as art, and not basically clever
anarcho-agit-prop that might make him a buck or two on the side. Regardless
of my opinion on the matter, however, I must say that I have come to
routinely delete the name.space thread without even reading the opening
graph -- something I do for nothing else on nettime, even for things that
do not effect my life (like art shows on the continent) or that I don't
have the brainspace to fully fathom or follow through to the end. The
name.space thread had clearly gained its own rhizomatic momentum, enough to
shoot off on its own increasingly inbred course.

Erik Davis
<<

and this came from Ted Byfield:
>>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 22:35:00 -0500
To: Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>
From: t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
Subject: Re: nettime: let's switch to news [offlist]

Howdy.
	I wonder about the effectiveness of switching this to news. Quite a
while ago, I posted a request there for some section of Stahlman's "English
Ideology," but I received not one response. Now, it's possible that lots of
people read nettime at news.thing and that none of them answered; but it
seems more likely that almost no one reads news there. Multiple and/or
alternative news servers aren't the simplest thing to set up on any
platform--it's not *that* hard, but it may be difficult enough to slow down
or stop many people. If so, then switching to news might mean switching to
nowhere. (Maybe not the worst thing in some cases, hey? ;)
	Is there an alternative? For example, a nettime-talk-l?
	[...]



so, the usenet-channel is an experiment which is dependent from the acceptance
of the participants. But even the most fancy web-discussion tools (like
minds.com)
do no conceptually differ from old bbs systems or the usenet. this is the
same path
the cypherpunks list tries to go (while it is much bigger) these days. But
nettime-l
is a bit more like a journal with a big editorship. Think about it as a
'filter'.
you cannot fill it with letters to the editors. this would change the basic
concept
and make it more circulatory. as there are so many more opportunities, not only
technically, i hope you'll come up with brand new ideas, subjects and creative
solutions for the future of nettime. 


have a nice day
-pit


--
*  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
*  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
*  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
*  more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body
*  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de