<nettime> list qualities & conditions of participation // thoughts from the linz local meetup

[davide bevilacqua via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Hi <nettime>,
last weekend during Ars Electronica in Linz we had a local meetup to 
welcome the list to its new home in Linz at servus.at

A few list members and non-yet members were present in a brief 
discussion round before the traditional server room visit.

The post-meetup thought I have is that there is no such a thing as 
something happening organically, especially the functioning of a mailing 
list like <nettime>.
Things happen within & according to the specific conditions that 
surrounds them, which that can be analyzed and in some cases influenced. 
We tried to do this together, also recognizing that describing on the 
list how the same nettime list works is something that could help taking 
off its institutional layer and make the list feel more approachable.

I summarize here some thoughts i had about that; for sure being 
inaccurate, forget interesting points, add some personal opinions and 
not mentioning who said what. Please include further thoughts and names 
if you feel so!

cheers & see you
Davide

***

The <nettime> list was born after a first meeting organized in june 1995 
at the Venice Biennale. At our local meetup, one participant was also 
part of that first meeting, something I'd like to recommend also for 
future local meetups :)

Using a mailing list today is probably something uncommon for many, also 
in the media art or theory circles. Perhaps the whole culture and 
practice of communication via mailing lists is old-fashioned and is not 
yet vintage enough to come back into vogue. Jokes aside, the fact that 
in many other communication formats (from forums to decentralized social 
media and whatever platform in between) have been developed, are maybe 
not so bad, because it has freed mailinglists from roles that do not 
suit them, such as being news outlets or immediate communication 
channels. So as nettime was born and developed in earlier net times, 
which role does it occupy now and what can this be in the future? From 
the conversation it felt that we all can contribute to, maybe inviting 
someone that could be interested or testing how the list might work.

Currently nettime has ~2000 (all amazing!) list members that can write 
and read single contributions of a mainly text-based, asynchronous 
discussion.
The <nettime> list is not curated, which means that there is no 
instituted role who is collecting references or deciding what is the 
next topic. This is something that is done in other lists. However, the 
topics are not just random. By scrolling the titles / topics in the list 
archive, we can notice a mix of media and technology criticism, 
political analysis and artistic / academic writing, often describing 
views on current social, economic, and geo-political crises.

Unlike mainstream social media, every member of a list shares the same 
potential audience, so on a technical level there is no dynamic of how 
many followers does one have. However, the experience of being on the 
list is not the same for everyone. Mailing lists are in fact not only a 
place for writing: some list members describe themselves as "readers", 
carefully following everything that goes through the list; some other 
might not have much time even and created bot-like reading extensions, 
so that at least *something* would still believe in reading all the 
incoming mails.
It is also not granted that everyone's text will be read with the same 
attention than the one given to another email addresses on this list. 
Not everyone shares the same way to engage with the list, nor has the 
same list history, and therefore will attract differently the limited 
attention of someone else.

So, under which conditions the status of the reader changes to become 
the one of the writer? In the end, it is still individual members who 
decide to write to the nettime list and then press "send". This is done 
with their own motivations, to comment something that might have not be 
covered yet or to get a response from the list e.g.  sharing drafts of 
essays to get feedback seems; or to check the temperature of a group of 
people that meet on the list because of the communication qualities of 
the list. Such qualities might be seen are the current health status of 
the list, and they are maintained by what Felix described as the role of 
the list moderation.

Moderation activity happens much more often that the few cases in which 
gatekeeping or removing something from the list is needed. Felix 
described it as taking care that conditions that influence the 
engagement, the tone of exchange, quality of content and the actual 
participation. It happens often on the border of the list or outside, 
congratulating off-list with someone for their contribution, or lowering 
tones of heated discussion outside. (thanks mods!)

The condition is also dependent on the individual to break the invisible 
barrier that separates the "draft" folder of our mailbox to the one 
gathering "sent" emails. As I am writing & frenetically tuning up all 
sentences, I ask myself: is this going to be smart enough? Some others 
might feel the same weight of the list and the stress to meet the 
quality of its content which, as Alessandro stated, is a strong quality 
of <nettime>, but also a weak point.
However, being in such a conversation at the local meetup felt however 
very empowering, and motivated me into typing this, not caring too much 
about matching the rest of the writings.

Finally, the list does not have to reach growth points, but it also does 
not reach makes sense to describe it and mention it to other people who 
might be interested to read it.
** By the way the archive and the main page https://nettime.org/ is not 
yet fully transfered, and it therefore still contain outdated info for 
subscriptions.
if you want to mention the list to someone who might be interested to 
join, they can register here: 
https://lists.servus.at/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l

++additional thought++ the 500MB of archive is something that also 
defines a specific way of producing and distributing knowledge and 
someone suggested it would be incredibly interesting to research that, 
thinking how this can be archived. any PhD places / candidates for this?

Thanks Vesna for the suggestion to organize local meetups, looking 
forwards to read from other meetups in the future!



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