[Theforum] Demographics

[Daniel J. Cody]

madhu - 

this is an awesome post, and i'm still re-reding parts. i just wanted to
address one point you make though on its own..

i do agree that thelist is more techie than designish. it would be cool to
include more web-*design* people in the conversation. we should be careful
not to try to become everything to everybody(or every web person in this
case) - we should genlty guide the community when we can, but for the most
part allow it to morph into what it(the community) thinks it should be.

and while we talk about 'here are the more recognized web *design*
lists/whatever out there. ...' we need to think about those design lists
asking themselves, 'how do we get more techie conversations on our mailing
list?' :)

.djc.

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Madhu Menon wrote:
> Well, you asked for it, sucker ;)

> I'm not sure if this is because there are relatively fewer visual designers 
> or usability people on thelist or because they don't *speak up* because 
> they think this is a "techie list". I hope our survey tells us this. It 

> In all fairness, trying to bring so many topics under the umbrella of one 
> list may be difficult. Some of them need to be on a list by themselves. In 
> fact, lists like sigia-l (Information architecture), CHI-WEB (Human 
> computer interaction for the Web), InterfaceMafia (interface design), 
> NTBugtraq (Win NT/2K bugs), etc. do serve as specialist lists, and hence 
> the discussions are more focussed. But if we encouraged it on thelist, 
> there would be more traffic on thelist, and apart from potentially causing 
> Dan headaches in list maintenance (like relay problems) <grin>, it would be 
> an enriching experience.
> 
> What we essentially need to do is tell people, "don't worry if it's a 
> stupid question, ask away."