Jim,
The aim is not to ratchet up the activity but rather to expose everyone to the myriad of
research problems and solutions that we all encounter. If one participates on the list
solely to hook up with someone working on the same line, they're missing much of the
willingly-shared experience and suggestions from a wide variety of people who are now
spread among separate lists. Bringing them together increases the 'value' of the
discussions.
I am familiar with the U.S. Genweb system (and use it) but this is already done in the UK
in the form of the GENUKI pages and these will grow as people begin to put online
databases together (say, parish-based) which can link to the GENUKI pages.
Regards,
Julie Preston
juliefpreston(a)sbcglobal.net
----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Duggan
To: WLS-RADNORSHIRE-L(a)rootsweb.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 10:17 AM
Subject: [WLS-RAD] RE: WLS-RADNORSHIRE-D Digest V06 #7
I can't pretend to understand what it takes for a list to "survive", but
it
strikes me that the roll up into larger lists is optimizing for activity
rather than value. Part of the difficulty in researching an area like
Radnor is matching up with other researchers on the same topic. I suspect
that will be more difficult in a larger "more noisy" list. On the other
hand I suspect you're right about the target population needing to be at
some critical level for a list to have significant activity.
Since I have already sounded a contrarian note let me also say I think a
small population area can support an active list if other research resources
are very rich. You can see this at work in some on the US county sites.
Good research material will drive a lot of community activity in both list
and site content contributions. See
http://www.rootsweb.com/~srgp/jmtindex.htm for one of the richest examples
of a site serving a group of rural counties.
Jim Duggan - Seeking Duggan's from the Marches. (Herefordshire,
Radnorshire and surrounding)
_____
From: WLS-RADNORSHIRE-D-request(a)rootsweb.com
[mailto:WLS-RADNORSHIRE-D-request@rootsweb.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 9:00 AM
To: WLS-RADNORSHIRE-D(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: WLS-RADNORSHIRE-D Digest V06 #7