The Art of Running Online Discussion Groups

Whether an email distributions list like Yahoo! Groups or an online forum like the many that exist on the Internet, managing the activities and exchanges of the group requires a steady and restrained hand. The arena of mind-to-mind intercourse is booby-trapped and perilous, and few people have any idea what they are doing.

What makes me qualified to observe practices on this subject? For one, I have been running online discussion groups since June 1994. That's more than sixteen years, long before most people had desktop computers, no less Internet access. I started the CyberVPM group then, and in December of that year started Ghostletters. Both are still thriving. Though I handed the reins of both groups over to others at one point or another, I like to think the foundation I set up is at least in part responsible for such longevity in a medium not known for long histories. I also have made money with lists. One I sold to a professional association for a nice sum, and Yahoo actually paid for me to switch both to their new Yahoo! Groups platform. That is not what I set out to do, but it was reward for the size, effectiveness and durability of the groups.

...censor the reading, not the writing

I was enough of a pioneer in this area that I so got the joke when Donna of The West Wing counseled her boss, Josh, about interacting with moderators of such groups. He had thought he could engage the members of a group devoted specifically to him and was surprised when its moderator absolutely trashed him. Donna explained, "Moderators of these groups are chain-smoking mu mu-wearing women" for whom the group is their opportunity for power. Overstated and unfair, of course, to apply to all or even most moderators, but they are still out there. On one knitting/crochet group I started sharing my computer skills by making mailing labels out of the distribution lists. I was asked to leave because this benignity was perceived as trying "to take over the group." I think we had a mu mu in this situation.

So my secrets...what are they? I hope discussion group moderators everywhere will read and think about the following.

1. Definitely create guidelines for participation based on the core purpose of your group. I said, core purpose, not your personal druthers or desire for power. Too many guidelines stifles exchange. Too few can do the same. Be judicious.

2. No matter how many guidelines you have, communicate effectively about them. No, not just a list, but give examples, explain succinctly their purpose, then monitor adherence for the possibility that the guidelines may have been unclear.

3. To moderate or not to moderate posts? If you have no life and want to be glued to your computer day and night, fine, moderate. But it's better to "censor the reading and not the writing." No one is forced to read every freakin' post on a list. If there is someone who is misbehaving, tell readers to skip that person's posts if they don't like them.

4. Don't overreact to other group members' complaints. No, you can't please everyone. If you act on every infuriated off list communication, you will spend your time adjusting and readjusting your groups. As stated above, it is generally preferable to simply tell the complainer that if they don't like someone's posts, they don't have to read them. Another aphorism of mine is "Write carefully and read generously." If they threaten to quit, then let them. If they were getting something out of the group, they will be back. If you are afraid they will have a bad influence on your group's reputation, bear in mind that they probably do this other places and that other people will take their complaints with a grain of salt.

A hands-off policy is always preferable, since it permits the greatest vitality and creativity in a group. If your group has a broad appeal, you need to be humble in watching how they interact. Be a shepherd, not a mule driver. Quality of the product is what is at stake.

... write carefully and read generously

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Reasons to Parté Hearté in 985 AD

Fight for your right to party!

I've been trying to find information about a particular marriage in Wessex history -- that's Anglo Saxon history for you Normans.  In particular I want to write a chapter on a royal wedding for my upcoming book of stories Alehouse Tales.  I was going to get to make it up mostly since they don't actually know when Aethelraed II, he who was called Unready, married Theodir of York's daughter, Aelfgifu.  I at least thought he had... and I was planning my two bards to arrive in time to get gigs at the festival and to have the alehouse packed to the thatch and lots of fun stuff going on.

Then Helen Hollick, author of The Forever Queen, who knows all about these things told me it was likely Aelfgifu was not a church sanctified wife, in fact she suggested she might be no more than one of good old Aethie's concubines.. so there went my parté out the unglazed window.  Fortunately she relented and said just to keep the Church out of it and, as she put it, I could still have my "knees up bash".  Phew!

In the meantime, while I was still pouting, I had started thinking of other reasons my alehouse denizens could kick up their.. um.. heels and celebrate.  here are some of the ideas I had.. can you offer some more?

• Winchesterama
• Sidewalk Sales Day in The Brooks
• King Alfred Days
• Merry Men Pride Week
• The Burned Cakes Festival
• Founders Day at the Nunnaminster
• Take Your Aetheling to Work Day
• Mercian Independence Day
• Dia de los Reyes Muertos
• St. Swithin's Day... oh wait, that's a real one
• Veterans of Viking Wars Day
• Winchester  to Romsey Fun Run
• Monastic Arts Festival
• Picnic in the Itchen Meadows Day
• Bloðmothfest

And that's not to mention Midsummer, Jul, Mayday and Michaelmas!

So says King Aethelraed, ready or not, it's time to party hearty!

The Why of Cooking

Stolen wholecloth from Food Timeline, with my thanks for their indulgence.

Why did humans start cooking their food?
 
Excellent question! Food historians, archaeologists, and paleontolgists do not have exact an answer due to the age of the evidence. They do, however, have theories:
 
"For hundreds of thousands of years the evolving human race had eaten its food raw, but at some time between the first deliberate use of fire--in Africa in 1,400,000BC or Asia in 500,000BC (depending on which theory happens to be the flavour of the month)-and the appearance of the Neanderthals on the prehistoric scene, cooking was discovered. Whether or not it came as a gastronomic revelation can only be guessed at, but since heat helps to release protein and carbohydrate as well as break down fibre, cooking increases the nutritive value of many foods and makes edible some that would otherwise be inedible. Improved health must certainly have been one result of the discovery of cooking, and it has even been argued, by the late Carleton Coon, that cooking was the decisive factor in leading man from a primarily animal existence into one that was more fully human'. Whatever the case, by all the laws of probability roasting must have been the first method used, its discovery accidental. The concept of roast meat could scarcely have existed without knowledge of cooking, nor the concept of cooking without knowledge of roast meat. Charles Lamb's imaginary tale of the discovery of roast pork is not, perhaps, too far off the mark. A litter of Chinese piglets, some stray sparks from the fire, a dwelling reduced to ashes, and unfamiliar but interesting smell, a crisp and delectable assault on the taste buds... Taken back a few millennia and relocated in Europe this would translate into a piece of mammoth, venison or something of the sort falling in the campfire and having to be left there until the flames died down. But however palatable a sizzling steak in ice-age conditions, the shrinkage that resuts from direct roasting would scarcely recommend itself to the hard-worked hunter, so that a natural next step, for tough roots... as for meat, would be slower cooking in the embers or on a flat stone by the side of the fire. Although the accidental discovery of roasting would have been perfectly feasible in the primitive world, boiling was a more sophisticated proposition."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers:New York] 1988 (p. 13-14) [NOTE: This book contains much more information on early cooking techniques than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you find a copy.]
 
"Homo erectus may have used fire to a very limited extent some 300,000 years ago, but the evidence is sparse and questionable. Fire's general use, according to both paleontological and archaeolgical records, began only about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago...The use of fire, extended to food preparation, resulted in a great increas of plant food supply. All of the major domesticated plant foods, such as wheat, barley, rice, millet, rye, and potatoes, require cooking before they are suitable for human consumption. In fact, in a raw state, many plants contain toxic or indigestible substances or antinutrients. But after cooking, many of these undesirable substances are deactivated, neutralized, reduced, or released; and starch and other nutrients in the plants are rendered absorbable by the digestive tract. Thus, the use of fire to cook plant foods doubtless encouraged the domsetication of these foods and, thus, was a vitally important factor in human cultural advancement."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 1571)
 
"Just as we do not know how, where or by whome fire was first domesticated, we cannot really tell anything about the way food was cooked in the most distant Paleolothic period. We can only base conjectures on the customs of existing primitive peoples. Bones and walnut or hazelnut shells have been found on excavated sites, but there is no means of knowing whether they are the remains of cooked meals, the debris of fires lit for heat, or even the remnants of incincerated raw waste matter...[researchers] are inclined to think the meat was roasted, from the evidence of Mousterain sites in Spain and the Dordogne..."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992 (p. 90)
 
"Food has long been baked in coals or under heated rocks, steamed inside animal stomachs and leaves, boiled in rockpots by heated stones, and so forth. An oven could be as simple as a hole in the ground, or a covering of heated stones. However, improved textures and flavours may not have been the reason fire was first controlled. People could have employed fire to keep wild beasts at bay, to trap them, to scare them out or to create open grassland, where tender shoots and leaves would be more accessible. People have long used fire to harden wooden weapons, and to keep warm at night. But even these uses, while not cooking in the narrow sense, improve the cooks' supplies, expanding the human niche."
---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons [University of Chicago:Urbana] 2000 (p. 221)
 
"French prehistorian Catherine Perles accepts that we share many aspects of feeding with other animals: other animals carry food to their lairs or transform it before consumption. However, she says, we transform food on a different level. The human species prepares its food by heat...and combines ingredients...She proposes that the culinary act distinguishes the human species, and is not just a symbol of, but a factor in, that very humanisation...Cooking is highly intentional...the culinary act is essentially sharing."
---A History of Cooks (p. 213)
 
Recommended reading (general history of cooking):

• Food in History/Reay Tannahill
• History of Food/Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat
• Food: A Culinary History/Flandrin & Montanari
• Cambridge World History of Food/Kiple & Ornelas
• The Kitchen in History/Molly Harrison

Introducing...

Lord and Lady Gaga

[Book Review] Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure, by Adm. Richard E. Byrd

Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure

Adm. Richard E. Byrd

My husband, Jim Tedford, has been telling me about this book for years. He read it in high school back in the 1970s, and it is easy to see how formative it was for him. When I saw the book, which is an actual account rather than a novel, was available for download from the National Library Services for the Blind, I thought it was high time I read something that interests him uniquely. I am very glad I did.

In Alone, Byrd tells the story of his harrowing, nearly fatal months by himself in a tiny shack in an Antarctic winter. He was there in 1933, at 80 degrees 8 minutes to make meteorological observations. Bear in mind that the South Pole is 90 degrees. He was about as far from the pole as Detroit is from Kansas City. The original plan was for three men to work together, but for a number of reasons, Byrd, the expedition's commander, decided he should do it alone. This and other last minute decisions nearly ended his life. The book is his memoir of the months he spent at Advance Base.

I am one of those readers who is highly susceptible to events and situations in a book, so I absolutely froze while I read Alone. It is amazing how the temperature could range in one day in June or July, as much as from two degrees F below to more than 30. Byrd lived in a small shack with two tunnels for supplies and a shelter for the weather recording equipment outside. The shack was buried for insulation, but Byrd had to go outside several times a day to change the paper and so forth on the recording devices, to make any repairs, and to make visual observations of such phenomena as the Aurora Australis. At its coldest the thermometer read 82 degrees F below zero. At that point in July, he was already failing from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Byrd says that he chose to do this ordeal not just for the sake of science but also because he wanted to experience complete and utter solitude. He wanted to see what would happen away from the social interactions and demands of real life. He learned this in spades, coming to a spiritual awareness he had not foreseen. As you read, you learn what an earnest fellow he was, what warmth he could exude, his love for his colleagues and family, and his quiet modesty. More than that you learn what a man of true courage can endure.

I see so much of Jim in this book, his fascination not only with the extremes of geography and weather but his earnest desire to learn from everything around him. He, like Byrd, cares so deeply about those in his life, the world, the wonder of it all. I also see where his interest in simple liiving comes from. The one thing Jim and Byrd did not share is a love for radio technology. Jim adores it, Byrd hated it, though of course it saved his life.

The book has a highly informative afterword by another author, telling about the rest of Byrd's life, what discoveries were made after his expeditions, and more about the history of Antarctic exploration.

Byrd states early in the book that his diaries, which make up part of it, reveal little of his emotions during his weeks of isolation and hardship. I don't know what he thought emotions were, because I saw plenty of self reflection and thoughtful contemplation not only in his account but in those diaries. The result is a picture of a highly admirable human being. Just like Jim.

Terrible Tudors

Isn't that redundant??