what I am prepared to engage in and what I am not prepared to engage in with my energy--the archives

[Michael Herman]

a few more notes here on "searchability" -- just to be clear -- and some
interesting statistics that give some good perspective, i think...

* the archives searching that we are making easier is the searching
using the search engine that is built into the list system itself.  that
is what has been available to anyone who subscribed, even if they
subscribed and unsubscribed only for the purpose of searching and never
saying hello to any of us.

* it occurs to me that some systems are now using fancy graphics
subscribe passwords because apparently the webcrawlers have been getting
into the regular subscription/password signups... so as far as email
address harvesting, that may already be possible.  either way, it seems
that any of us in regular conversation with friends and strangers around
the world aren't likely to hide our addresses forever.  that's what spam
filters are for <grin>.

* it also occurs to me that the search engines have developed to the
point where they are able to sift out the importance of pages, based on
such things as the number of pages that a given page links to and how
many pages actually link to the given page.  since most of our messages
contain few if any links, and there are no pages anywhere on teh web
directly linking to any of our postings, our messages will always come
out very low or not at all in searches.

* now for the NUMBERS... we have posted a whopping 12,330 messages to
the list archives to date. plus this one.  best i can tell, birgitt and
michaelmp have posted exactly the same number of messages (402). i've
posted a few more than they have (423).  chris corrigan has posted 530
in a somewhat shorter time period... apparently tending in the direction
of fully present rather than totally invisible!  harrison's been around
from the beginning and has posted 755.  there may be more prolific
posters, but these are the ones who came to mind and whose email
addresses i could remember.  and of course this says nothing for the
length and quality of the messages.  artur's had a few long ones and
florian's managed to speak volumes in a few lines.  all good, of course.

* so birgitt, your 402 postings are about 3% of the total list messages,
since boise state started archiving in march 1998.  those posted before
the archives were announced to you were only 145 or about 1% of all
messages ever posted to the list.  also, these 145 messages were not the
earliest messages, as the list ran for perhaps 2 years before the
archives were added to all lists by boise state, as a public service
that we didn't have any decision in at all.  so this means that the
oldest and most personal messages, when the group was still small, are
not archived at all.  i hope this provides a bit of perspective on what
we're talking about here.

* also noting here that the list archives were announced in june 2000.
10,000 of the 12330 messages, or 81% of all archived list messages have
been posted since the public archives were announced, discussed at
length, and the FAQ explaining them were created.

so it seems that the oldest and most personal messages when the list was
small were never archived.  the archives ran for some time with nobody
knowing the archives were there.  they were opened and announced and
most of our activity has happened since then.  the search engines may
get in and root around a bit, but the likelihood of any one link-poor
and often very short posting using many of the same words as so many
other list postings being found and returned by a google type engine
seems remarkably small.  and the possibility of such a relatively small
number of postings being returned by an oslist-search-engine query is
also pretty small AND that has been publicly possible for almost four
years now.

i just queried all this stuff tonight and it only strengthens my sense
that this was not the most major move i could have made with the
technology we have available to us.  i'm glad to see just how much we
have to share with the world.  i'm glad it's easier. many others seem
glad too.  and if it's any consolation to anyone out there, if i was
really running a covert operation here, i would never announce anything
about any of this... but i did and i do and i'm going back to work on
the rest of my life here.

thanks to all for the lively discussion here.  i sure hope we can get
back to questions of opening new spaces.  and birgitt, i hope that some
of this will be of some comfort.

peace, michaelh






EVERETT813 at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 3/30/04 1:49:39 PM, mherman at globalchicago.net writes:
>
>
>
>
>>and so i say again, this is not a major change imposed by secret people
>>in power.  it is a simple, technical acknowledgement of what we already
>>and always have been.  a global, public, conversation.
>>
>>michael
>>
>>
>>
>
>Michael:
>
>Spot on.   And let us keep it that way.
>
>Open Space is exactly that--Open and Spacious and we need to keep it that
>way.   The Archive is part of that openness, imho.
>
>I also know that anything I publish herein is open to the world, and treat it
>as such.
>
>Paul Everett
>
>*
>*
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--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Avenue #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
(312) 280-7838

http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications
http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground
http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space

...inviting organization into movement

*
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