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Yes. The intended scope of all three of these electronic serials is
w-i-d-e, and their published and distributed purposes are
lacking.
The introductory message to this list consisted of boilerplate `how to
subscribe, unsubscribe, and get help from a listserv' text, prefaced
by this one sentence:
Dear networker,
Your subscription to list CWIS-L (Campus--Wide Information
Systems) has been accepted.
Speaking of boilerplate text... here is the welcome message I received
from the Public Access Computer Systems Forum:
Dear networker,
Your subscription to list PACS-L (Public--Access Computer
Systems Forum) has been accepted.
That's it. No automagically delivered Frequently-Asked-Questions
(FAQ) or Warm-Welcome messages. I recall receiving elaborate and
lofty `mission statements' from some of the lists that I joined to
fulfill a similar GSLIS 200 assignment in 1992. Participants
appear to follow a sort of unspoken `Robert's Rules of the
Internet,' in which they politely pardon their tangents, and keep
them short. The most common junk-mail I see here is the
never-ending stream of `subscribe' and `unsubscribe' posts, from
the participants who haven't had a chance to learn more about the
how listserv software works.
Is a huge and disorganized electronic discussion. Unlike other
newsgroups, this one publishes no FAQ, a point often lamented
by the regular participants. The purpose of this forum is apparently
whatever the contributors choose to make of it. An amusing antic of
these netters is cross-posting, in which someone will publish
a challenging topic in a dozen or more remotely related newsgroups,
and ask all interested parties to participate in a conversation hosted
by alt.culture.usenet. This often results in conversation threads
that are huge, but not too strongly tied to their stated topic.
Next: Electronic vs. Alternative Media
Up: Electronic Publications Evaluation
Previous: Summarize The Content Of
Contents
sean dreilinger