Cob: Coblist diversity

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Amanda Peck wrote:

[snip]
> This group is probably too large and too diverse, even among the people who
> contribute regularly, to worry about about things like that.  But it's a
> little disconcerting to find that we've angered people we don't even know
> about.  I'd guess we need to factor this in and get over it.
[snip]

To give everyone a better idea of who you are addressing when you send
email to the coblist, here are some relevant facts:

  - 485 members (we lost 22 people in the last three days due to all
                 the off topic postings)

  - Most people who join the list never post to the list, they simply
    listen and (presumably) try to learn what they can about cob.

  - Currently we have members from at least 15 countries (simply by
    looking at email addresses on the list that have country code
    suffixes).

  - Probably at least 25 countries as most email addresses do not have
    a country code in them, and I can remember recent postings and/or
    private emails to me from members in many countries that weren't in
    the list above.  Working from memory and the current list, we have had
    as members of the list (either currently or in the past), people who
    were known to me or whose email address indicated they were from the
    following countries:

       Argentina
       Australia
       Brazil
       Canada
       Chile
       Cocos (Keeling) Islands
       Columbia
       Costa Rica
       Czech Republic
       Denmark
       Ecuador
       Egypt
       Ethiopia
       Finland
       France
       Germany
       Hungary
       India
       Indonesia
       Ireland
       Israel
       Italy
       Japan
       Mexico
       New Zealand
       Nicaragua
       Pakistan
       Peru
       Romania
       Russia
       South Africa
       Sweden
       The Netherlands
       United Kingdom
       United States

    I am sure there are more, if the country you are living in isn't on
    this list, I would be interested in knowing where you are located,
    please email me privately (not to the coblist), and I will create
    a more comprehensive list of where our members are located (I won't
    post your name or email address anywhere)

Perhaps this will give all of you a better feel for our group, and maybe a
better understanding of:

   A - Why it is a good thing that not everyone participates (if everyone
       sent just one message a week, that would be 485 messages and we
       would all unsubscribe just to avoid wading through it).

   B - Why I push so hard to keep it on topic.  The only thing that
       everyone on this list is likely to have in common is that we are
       all interested in building with cob.  Politics are local to your
       county, state, province or country; reasons for building with
       cob are personal and could include environmental concerns,
       financial issues, health, safety, religion, or other reasons I
       haven't thought of.

   C - When we go off topic, we start losing people whose only interest in
       postings on this list is how to build with cob and closely related
       techniques.

FWIW.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com