The natural life cycle of mailing lists

[Alex Kowalski]

Just a couple of observations here, and some more to Brett forthcoming in a
private email.  Inre: membership, I came back to the list after buying my '87
recently because I knew that this list was head-and-shoulders above any other
resource in terms of the depth of the knowledge (both in active members and
in the archives) and willingness to help each other zero in
on problems and fix them.  I've not been disappointed in the month or so
I've been back.   The last Audi I owned was an '86 5KCSTQ, which I crashed
in a very stupid and unfortunate accident, and after parting it out to a lister
I stayed away from Audis for a while -- actually from cars in general, because
I lived in the big city and was renting, and a parking space cost $125/month
that I didn't have.

Now I own my home and I have garage space, and when I found this car 
the planets were all aligned, so to speak.   As far as contributions are concerned,
there's definitely a learning curve because the experts here are really 
experts.  They're funny, too. ;-)  I was a little embarrassed, in fact -- there was so 
much about these cars that I had forgotten in the intervening years.  For example, I had completely
forgotten that the radiator fan on my car has three speeds and that the injector
cooling fan runs off a switch on the wastegate heat shield, totally separate from the
after-run coolant pump.

In any case, the list seems very strong and to me at least hasn't lost anything in terms
of contentiousness or effectiveness or merriment or "S/N ratio" even with the fragmentation and
some attrition.  As far as recruitment, when I wasn't lurking in the past
few years, I told at least four complete strangers to check Audifans out -- by
striking up conversations at the 7/11 and the gas station with people I met
driving Audis.  I'd tell them:  "Oh, you have a problem with [X]?  Got a pen?  Do you
have internet access?...."  etc. 

In fact, that was kind of surprising on a couple of occasions.  I've had people look at me 
a little puzzled when I tell them:  "Yes, there is a free resource that can help you get this
fixed on your expensive German car."  I usually get a look of mild disbelief, but It's True!  I
assure them.  Maybe they're used to feeling helpless ;)

I'd like to contribute some Knowledge Base material in the near future.  As soon as
the weather clears up a little, I'll be breaking out the tools and the camera.

Cheers,
Alex Kowalski
'87 5KCSTQ  


> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 15:30:59 -0500
> From: Brett Dikeman <quattro at frank.mercea.net>
> Subject: Re: The natural life cycle of mailing lists
> Andrew Buc wrote:
> 
> > Someone on BookCrossing called my attention to this:
> >
> > http://archive.mail-list.com/shoptalk/msg00002.html
> 
> 
> After a decade on the q-list and starting a list of my own, fragments of 
<snip> 
> 
> List membership #'s have never gone anywhere fast.  I used to keep an 
> eye on stats now and then to make sure we were not accidentally bumping 
> half the list off with the bounce handler, and every time I looked, I 
> saw something of a revolving door; a small stream of people sub, see 
> it's not for them, and leave within a week or so.   I suppose that means 
> Audifans needs to do a better job of marketing itself- not to increase 
> the # of people, but to help people figure out if it's "for" them or 
> not; save them some hassle. Ignoring the revolving door, membership 
> numbers ebb+flow slightly.
> 
> For the new year I'd like to see more active participation on the part 
> of list members.  Like, say, with the knowledgebase! :-)