Dear Andreas, Regarding an academic community, I would personally prefer a) a mailing list to seriously discuss some topics, aided by b) a facebook group for quick news and comments
I suppose I am very old fashioned, but mailing lists are my definitive favourites. Sorry, but I was born in the 20th c. ;) - Blogs: I don't give a fig about blogs as a means of regular information. I do not follow any. Of course I read blog posts sometimes, when they are pointed out to me or when hey come up in a web search, but I do not *follow* any blog. - Wiki sites: I just don't trust them. - Social networks: you do have a point about the segmentation; I use Facebook a lot for both professional and personal contacts, and I have an academia.edu account, but I don't use it very actively and do not wish to have to follow news and posts on several networks. - Bulletin boards: they work well for some communities, but I don't feel that academic communities have the right balance of news and debates to work well on BB. - Twitter: not good for academic communities IMHO.
Interesting question, Andreas! :) Marjorie
On 11 June 2013 16:03, Andreas Wagner Andreas.Wagner@em.uni-frankfurt.dewrote:
Dear list,
please forgive me for rushing in, but I have been having some difficulties in finding people with corresponding experiences and willingness to share their thoughts:
When planning to set up a platform on which an international and interdisciplinary community of humanities researchers (most probably not all versed in digital technologies) is invited to exchange their ideas, questions, announcements around a certain thematic focus consisting in a "historically localizable" discourse (in this case the so-called "School of Salamanca" of the 16th and 17th centuries), what type of platform would you prefer, and why? Blog, Mailing list, Bulletin Board, Wiki, ...? How do you perceive access and participation thresholds, popularity/dissemination/**visibility, feedback likelihood, etc?
To possibly provoke some comments, here are a few intuitions of mine. Please contradict and challenge (or confirm) based on your experiences, or your intuitions:
- Blogs are easily accessible and can be viewed/read comfortable, but
they tend to have a restriced set of authors. Can anyone imagine applying for authorship rights to a blog administration in order to just pose one question or to advertise one conference?
The same holds for wiki sites.
Social networks like academia.edu, itergateway groups etc. depend on
people to focus on one such network which might not be their favorite one, so a too large portion of interested persons is kept out.
Bulletin Boards are a mess.
Twitter messages are too short.
Mailing lists are not subscribed to because they look old-fashioned.
Being somewhat nerdy myself, they are my personal favorites, however.
On the other hand, when I have asked that same question on my facebook profile, the only response I did get was a suggestion to go for a blog. In other social networks or fora (academia.edu, community.itergateway.org, researchgate.net etc.) I did not get any reply at all (although some are watching/following the question).
I would be very grateful for any insights shared...
Best regards,
Andreas
-- Dr. Andreas Wagner Project "The School of Salamanca" Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz and Institute of Philosophy Goethe University Frankfurt http://salamanca.adwmainz.de
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