Why do educators hate mailing lists?

[Marty Billingsley]

Judy Perry <jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu> writes:
>
> I must admit that I find the 'objection to mail list traffic' most
> baffling but perhaps generic to the edu population.
>
> While finishing a recent M.S. in instructional design & technology, I
> noticed that one or more of my colleagues were troubled by the "volume" of
> email that transpired.
<snip>
> So, I don't understand why edu folks don't like mail traffic, especially
> on a topic in which they are presumably interested.
>
> What am I not understanding?? (mind you, I'm an educator myself...).

I agree; I don't understand the objection.  I find that I'm much too
busy to read anything that doesn't come to my mailbox.  I don't make
the time to go to web sites to catch up on info.  If information I'm
interested in comes to my mailbox, I scan it and either throw it
away or file it for later use.  Mind you, if I didn't get the
digest version of mailing lists I'd go bonkers.

For example, NewsScan used to come to my email box daily and I
would scan it for interesting tidbits.  Due to a mail reconfig, it
no longer arrives.  I know perfectly well I could go to NewsScan.com
and read the news every day but I don't.

Maybe the way to please everyone is to have a list-serv that is
archived somewhere so that folks who prefer email can have it their
way, and those who don't can unsubscribe from the list-serv and
read the archive.

  - marty

--
Marty Billingsley (marty at ucls.uchicago.edu)
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools