Chief Correspondent for LSM 2010

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Grover Partee

-- ben koot (ben@travelcompass.zzn.com), February 21, 2001

Answers

I got to wondering the other day where LSM might go over the next ten years. Here's one possible scenario for 2010

LSM has in excess of 1000 participants about 30% of whom are active contributors to a total of nearly 3000 messages per month. Fifty "Chief Correspondents" summarize the messages in their own areas of interest each week and our "Lead Correspondent" merges these summaries and emails the result to the 400 participants who prefer that sort of updates to wading through the mass of messages on the web or getting 100 messages a day directly or even in a digest form.

Summaries are archived to a website where they are accessible via hotlinks from a "Table of Contents" maintained in the discussion arena. Messages 2 weeks old are removed from the discussion area and archived to a website where they are accessible via hotlinks from the summaries and from other messages. The number of messages actually appearing on the board ranges between 1000 and 2000.

Chris' weekly summaries - when he has the time to do them - are a great start toward this scenario. And, in time, as the community grows, these summaries will outgrow the capacity of a single summarizer. Hence, several people - the "Chief Correspondents" - will need to do a brief summary of what has transpired in their areas of interest. Chris could merge those summaries.

A newcomer to the list would still face a daunting task: the most recent, un-summarized and un-archived messages could easily number more than 2000. But the most recent summaries would be a place to start and earlier summaries would provide the history ("corporate myths") necessary to support the community. Appropriate links within the summaries (and current messages) would allow someone to drill down to the earliest messages on almost any topic whatsoever. Of course all this summarizing and compiling and archiving and hotlinking would be pretty much a full time job. Right now 82 participants are generating about 250 messages each month. In ten years we could easily have 1000 participants and, if the participation level remains the same, 3000 messages per month. That would mean an average of 750 message per week to be read, summarized, archived and hotlinked. (Note that this is an "average." Natural fluctuations in interest and time could easily drive the message load to 1000 or 1500 in a single week.)

The summaries could be posted to the Files area on Yahoo and that might make the linking a little easier. However, the files are not, I think, text-searchable and it would be nice to be able to do a text level search of the archives. The summaries could also be posted to the message area (which is text-searchable.) One advantage of that is that a "Chief Correspondent" could edit the summary after the fact and provide important "forward links" - links to more recent messages.

There's a "whole lotta linkin' goin' on" here. Is there a way to simplify this process? Is there some sort of software that would support the preparation and updating of an index or concordance? Ideally this would be one that would retain its links to a specific message even if that message were moved into a summary/archive document.

What alternative scenarios do you see? More importantly, which scenario is your vision for LSM; where do you WANT us to be in 2010, what should we be doing and how should we be doing it?

-- ben koot (ben@travelcompass.zzn.com), February 21, 2001.


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