> NO OFFENSE to anyone, but i would say it is from mostly the
> newbies. alot of them are the ones who i think dont like to
> see alot of email in thier boxes and would rather go
> somehwere and chat out their problems instead get a more
> personalized, more direct interaction with their problems.
I'm not offended, and I'm certainly not a newbie. But I do wish that
NewtonTalk offered a choice of online reading, not just email. I belong
to a lot of groups, mostly on yahoo, and I keep most of them set to be
read on the web. That way my email program isn't innundated with
messages, most of which I don't need to read. (I probably read only
three or four of the many, many NewtonTalk messages per day, but I would
hate to miss those three or four.) There are some groups, the ones that
are most important, like boards I'm a board member of, that I set to
send me messages in email. Otherwise, in the evening I browse to the web
site of the group and scan message headers, reading a few messages here
and there.
You might say that I can do the same with email. I do have NewtonTalk
messages automatically filtered into a separate folder, of course. But
it's inconvenient, when I'm trying to work with email coming in from
other sources, to have my system contantly signalling new messages. I
have to check it each time in case it's something I need to deal with,
so I can't just pretend NewtonTalk doesn't exist and scan messages
later. Frankly, it's annoying. With a forum, I am in control of that
information stream. That's critically important if you're working in an
information management job like mine.
The point is that with a group like the ones yahoo offers, either option
is available. As a webmaster of a very popular site, a research
librarian, a teacher, a writer, and a theatre director, I get well over
a hundred email per day not counting NewtonTalk messages. That means I'm
constantly dealing with incoming information and switching hats all the
time, so to speak. Just this morning I've submitted board meeting
minutes for the theatre and dealt with choosing a dinner theatre script,
taught a class of preschoolers how to use the computer lab, talked with
a member of my staff about invoices of an order that just came in, read
a couple of emails about programming for an upcoming literary conference
I'm a board member of, and helped a lot of kids find books, write
reports, research the Civil War, and figure out why their document
doesn't appear in their folder on the server when they just KNOW they
saved it there.
You mention that people want to chat about their problems. A forum isn't
a chat room. I agree that a chat room would be useless. But providing
users with the option to keep their email clear would be wonderful. It
would save a me LOT of time. Way back when the Newton was the Next Big
Thing, there was a book about using it which refered to the Newton as an
Information Surfboard, proclaiming that it allowed users to navigate and
stay on top of all the information of their busy lives in one convenient
place. Now I am finding my connection to NewtonTalk is having the
opposite effect entirely. Instead of managing the stream of Newton
information, I'm drowning in it.
I love being connected to the Newton community, but I am seriously
considering dropping out of NewtonTalk. It's just too much.
Steve Vander Ark
Library media specialist, Byron Center Christian School
Drama director, Hillside Community Church
Webmaster, The Harry Potter Lexicon
Resident Director, Caledonia Community Players
Board member, various corporations and organizations
Perpetual committee member
Dad and husband
Newton user
-- This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/
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