<nettime> Re: nottime-l etc: attempt@purpose-summary

[Josselien Janssens <jjjumps@speed.A2000.nl>]

Yay! Good questions, Felipe, Fred et all!

Here's my thoughts as a Communications/Media/PR person: Felipe, you
don't create a whole new newspaper for a specific war, no? Nettime-L is
like a intl 'newsforum' for the target group "people like us". I.e.
those people who have as only solid unifying criterium that they are on
Nettime-L; are ruffly divided up in all the grey areas between the
categories "artist", "activist", "geek", "designer", "freak" or a
combination of any or all of those. I would not dare to generalise more
than that about this group. 

The forum Nettime-l is used to exchange news and views on stuff that
interests us (if it is politically correct to speak of the Nettime group
as "us") and keeps our minds busy otherwise we wouldn't be on it. 

EVERY list I'm on is mainly talking about Kosovo. Every newspaper spends
70% of their front page on it. At work 70% of the conversations pretty
much are about the war as well. In that sense, Nettime comes as close as
it can to reflecting the 'normal' world... There IS an actual WAR on you
know, with people dying. I don't intend to sneer, I know you all are
aware of this, that is why we're all so pre-occupied with it. Wars DO
tend to disrupt whatever passes for normality on every level. You NEED
to communicate about them in every circle. 

So my plea is, don't try to categorise communication too much. Because
then you have to 1) memorise all the categories and 2) decide which
message falls under which category and 3) what to do with ones that just
won't fit any category, etc. etc... 

Organising communication in order to make it easier on each other is a
great idea though. Having a clear communication goal with your message
is useful. But don't stop communicating about the important matters on
Nettime. Especially when it is about basic survival for a lot of people
and we may be able to somehow help getting nearer the end of their
plight. 

And when you're talking 25 messages a day, do you really need more
lists? The war (or any other big subject) may spin off "special-lists"
(Kosovo-l etc.) created by or for 'readers' of Nettime but they would
have their own target group as well beyond that. Just like there are
specialist media for particular target groups interested in diving
further into the material or reading solely about one particular aspect
of something or other. 

With regards to the war in Kosovo, those people interested are also
catered for on other sites and lists - which URLs are constantly
conveniently passed on through Nettime. 

And nowhere else indeed do you get quite this specific broad range of
coverage: sharp analysis, rant, spy-central, wars-within-wars, letters
from Belgrade, poetry, ART, etc. Most messages about the war are pretty
clearly marked in the subject line.  

Nobody, I'm sure, reads EVERYTHING?! (Stop here. Don't read this!) 
Except for the moderators. Their brains are probably made of pure latex
to be able to bounce all this stuff around. So let's make their life
easy by not making it harder. (Deliberate stupid-ism, it's late.) It
would be nice to get a moderators' take on this. 

Cheers,
Josselien

PS: Uuh, f_3, this acceptable in terms of n.b.y.-levels? Still pretty
bad? ;> Feel free to shoot with rubber bullet points. 

nettime's_indigestive_system schreef:

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