Some organisations, in recent months/years, also starts to block sending e-mails to mailing lists / listserv. So it would prevent people working in such organisations from sending e-mails. These organisations often also block access to GMail (or other web-mails), which rules out of subscribing to mailing list via GMail -- if people want to read "anzstat" posts during work hours.

Noting that this discussion was about 4 months ago, I am looking at the list of general topics and see that hardly any posts have any replies.  Sp I think the data are in: very little engagement.

There was nothing at all wrong with the old ANZStat. The best thing was that is was just an email group so it was incredibly easy to access. I think the society should consider starting another email group. Those who do not like it can use the Forum. I will continue to check in here to see if there is anything of interest, but currently it is very anodyne.

Adrian Barnett wrote:

Hi Christoph

One important measure of success is that nobody has been vilified on this list, nor has there been any racist or sexist comments. All of which happened on the old ANZSTAT list in the last year. Regards, 

Adrian

Reducing the amount of traffic will at the same time limit what offends.  What is important is that inappropriate comment is called out.  This is surely an important part of the process by which SSAI, as a community, reins in those who overstep the mark, hopefully with effects that will carry across to other areas of their professional life.  In this respect, the old list functioned a whole lot better than another list to which many of us subscribe.

There can be occasions when those who are judged to have overstepped the mark themselves require support.  Whatever the list mechanics, that is a difficult area to negotiate.

Hi Adrian,

Would you be able to suggest any metrics from which you consider this forum to be definitely successful or a definite failure? For example, if the current level of non-engagement persists for x weeks or months, when would this be considered a failure? Meta engagement (talking about the forum itself) doesn't count :).

For example, I clicked on the emailed update, could see the message, tried to reply but had to login again and then had to go back to the email and click on the link again, instead of just replying to the email.

It seems that a facebook group is the usual approach taken, despite the reputation of that august institution as a facebook group is as simple to use as the original list server.

I think the result is obvious. The new ANZSTAT is to put it mildly not living up to expectations. Virtually no traffic to speak of. I think its just too much bother to post or read content.

R