I think myself that it is an area that the dust has yet to settle on: in a sense like the academic listserv 20 years ago. We now generally know how to deal with the perils of lists (trolls, flames, etc.) and it all seems quite usual. But I remember back in the late 1980s and early 1990s that things were very different and listservs seemed quite difficult to manage.
At the TEI, we just ran an experimental tweet feed (or rather, one was proposed and we encouraged people to use it). It got really good reviews from many participants, but there were also a couple of complaints and I worry about how the whole idea of a public metaconversation might affect those who worry, for example, about contributing to mailing lists and the like. I can see how somebody might find the idea of presenting a conference paper very intimidating while subject to instant public comment and criticism.
Obviously an area that still requires experiment and careful thought.
-dan
Lou wrote:
There seems to be quite a backlash on this topic, stateside.
See e.g. http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Tweckling-Twitterfolk-/8895/
James Cummings wrote:
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 11:41, O'Donnell, Dan daniel.odonnell@uleth.ca wrote:
If I might add one comment born of unfortunately hard experience at the TEI: please remember that postings to a dm twitter feed are public and reflect on us as a community. It is easy to end up criticising people more harshly than you realise!
Hello Dan,
Have no fear. Currently the 'DigitalMedieval' twitter feed is set up only to forward DM's news feed (and twitterfeed.com seems to be being highly selective in forgetting to forward some things in any case!) so anything posted has to undergo the same moderation as posting news items (approval by a number of volunteers on the board). As the person who set up the account I can, if necessary, post something manually. In my announcement of it when I suggested that we might add something extra to it during conferences, I was only thinking we might update it with reminders of important digital/medieval sessions or something like that. I don't think anyone would suggest using any of the official DM channels for criticising anyone, at any point!
But otherwise I'd say that what people post on their very own non-official twitter feeds, facebook statuses, blogs, webpages, or bulletin boards is a matter for their own consciences. (It is perhaps interesting to note the different modes of writing people use in such things, compared to email and traditional publication, but that is, of course, a different conversation.)
-James
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Digital Medievalist -- http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/ Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/ Journal Editors: editors _AT_ digitalmedievalist.org News: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/news/ Wiki: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/wiki/ Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l