-listspam, Poetics, responsibility-

I recently posted to the Poetics list, objecting to the forwarding without comment of information available through other subscriptions. This post received several responses, on- and off-list. Joe Brennan, in particular, asked some interesting questions. I'm posting this, a slightly altered version of my response to Joe's questions, because it underlies bigger issues that I've been thinking on lately, and I hope to feel out the sections of this rant which can exist and grow on their own.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about discourse communities, analyzing online discussions based upon content and community. In my opinion, everyone in a listserv has a sort of social responsibility to maintain the discourse community. This is one reason why topical listservs are the norm--they are created at the grassroots level by people with similar interests. Forums are different--they organize from the top-down as opposed to the bottom. Blogs are different still.

I'm not suggesting my right to be left alone is any more important than the freedom of speech. But then, I'm not suggesting that content providers like the Assassinated Press or A.Word.A.Day stop operation. I'm suggesting that members of the Poetics community take their responsibility for the discourse community into mind when posting. If these forwardings were presented to the Poetics community with an interest to spur discussion on the list, then perhaps they should include a little metacommentary by the poster in order to guide that discussion. In other words, posters should take responsibility for the discourse of Poetics. Right now, Poetics is dying, being used almost exclusively as a one-to-many advertisement list, replicating content that can be gotten elsewhere--this is reexemplified in weblog announcements sent to the list, which strangely advertise the discourse of list members while relegating list discourse to areas outside the list. What worries me is that Poetics is losing any other drive as a discourse community. This is crucial, because, as I've suggested before, listservs are a different sort of discourse community: one that progresses through contention as opposed to through concurrence.

Besides my philosophical objection to notifications cross-posted to discussion lists from notification lists, it is important to note from a worldwide perspective that in many areas of the world (both developed and undeveloped), internet access is not a given and often comes within different paradigms--Japanese broadband connections are pay-by-the-minute. In some countries--Denmark comes to mind--abuse of discourse communities is considered theft or defacement--along the lines of vandalism or destruction of public property. Only, IMHO, the defacement of a discourse community is much more destructive than simple graffiti. But the same rules of social responsibility apply in public spaces and virtual discourse communities. If I don't like graffiti, is it my responsibility not to look? How is that different from telling me to use my delete key to avoid spam?

These are thoughts that are still brewing. I'll post more on these subjects later.