[Oman-l] List quality

[Joachim Duester]

Dear Tommy, dear list members,

As much as I hate it to act against my own conviction that this list
should carry messages of relevance to Oman and nothing else, I would
like to reply to Tommy who has raised the question of the quality of a
list.

* PALESTINE

First of all, however, I wish to make it quite clear, especially to
those who object to postings about the Palestine issue because they hold
different political opinions, that my personal support for the
Palestinian cause is unequivocal. It is my firm believe that there can
be no lasting peace without at least some sort of justice. You cannot
put offender and victim on the same level and ask them to come to terms,
as most Western governments would like to have it. Despite the enourmous
outside financial and political support without which the Israeli state
in Palestine would have collapsed a long time ago, Israel will not
survive as a state unless it changes its basic ideology, puts an end to
immigration and the unfortunate settlement policy, and accepts the fact
that their community in Palestine can only continue to exist if and to
the extent to which they get it accepted by the Palestinians. I find it
a great tragedy for all the Israelis - which are no better or worse
human beings than any other in this world, and perhaps better educated
and more skilled than many - that they live in a state which was built
on false premises and which is not providing them with the peaceful home
every human being deserves, but it is up to them to change the character
of their state and to stop victimizing the Palestinians. 

The above is a very, very rough outline of my personal opinion and not
to be taken as any sort of analysis of a problem which has many aspects.
Being realistic, I can only hope that what is left of the peace process
will be carried on in one way or another by the two sides. But leaving
realpolitik aside, I needed to say what I have said above because I do
not wish to leave anyone in doubt about my motives for objecting to
postings about the Palestine problem in this maillist. Mind you, I did
not write this to start the discussion afresh -  if you need to voice
your objection to my views, write to me personally.


* QUALITY OF THE LIST

- Firstly, the quality of the list depends very much on whether the
postings are highly relevant to the topic  the list has been created
for, i.e., Oman. In that respect, even a trivial posting about Oman adds
more to list quality than a brilliant analysis on a topic not, or only
remotely, associated with Oman. In that context, contributions on Omani
reactions to the events in Palestine are without doubt highly relevant
to the topic of the list. 

- Secondly, amongst those who unsubscribed were members whose views on
Palestine are not very far from mine, but if you receive hundreds of
e-mails every day, you try to cut down the influx of messages to what
you really want to get. They have subscribed because they want to read
postings on Oman, and if they find there is too much non-Omani stuff on
the list (however relevant this stuff may be in another context), they
sign off. 
BTW, this list has not been able to attract a number of first-class
experts on Oman whom I invited, simply because they fear their joining
the list will result in their mailboxes being filled with a lot of
messages of little relevance to their interest in Oman.

- Thirdly, the aspect of quantity, i.e. number of list members, should
not be discarded lightly. For a good discussion list, it is certainly
better to have a handful of active members plus perhaps a silent
audience of a few dozens who throw in some comment occasionally. On the
other hand, I did not conceive of this list as mainly a discussions
list, but rather wanted the list to become a useful tool to quickly
distribute Oman-related information (other than daily news which
everybody can follow in the Omani newspapers on the WWW), to find an
expert on a certain topic, to provide answers to a specific question, to
match people with common Oman-related interests. With this aim in mind,
the list needs to have as many Oman-interested subscribers as possible
in order to serve its purpose. The problem is: if you want many 
subscribers, you must keep the difficult balance between too much and
too little list activity. I could try to achieve this by making it a
moderated list, but this reminds me too much of censorship and also
delays postings unnecessarily, especially when I am busy with other
things. 

To those who have been active in discussions rather than doing 'one-way
postings' recently: don't misunderstand me  - I did enjoy all your
contributions and certainly prefer an active list to a dead list. 

This has been a long message, and I fear I have alienated some
subscribers and have not done justice to everybody.  I hope no-one will
leave the list just because my political opinions differ from his or
hers, although I understand that for those in the region these things
matter more than they might matter to me here far away in Europe.

Sincerely,
Joachim Duester

http://oman.org/maillist.htm (general info on oman-l)
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http://oman.org/pipermail/oman-l (list archives - without the
contributions to the old Oman list, March-November 1996, which included
the famous purple dishdasha debate !)