"Possible trend" set


Prof. Yin links here and sees a trend ... Overblogging. Overemailing. Uncharitable accusations made long ago. ... Are email lists dying out?

So, House of Althouse has been linked by Prof. Yin who's calling second-blogging if not a trend, a "possible trend." Maybe there is a lot of second-blogging, but it is just anonymous, like the one Tonya wanted to do/is doing. Of course, there is a lot of second-blogging in the form of participating in a group blog, while having an individual blog. But there must be a lot of double blogging where one is work and one is play, where you don't want to taint the professionalism of blog 1. But my blog 1 was tainted from day 1. So the trend over here is perhaps inexplicable second blogging. Or the overflow blogging of Someone Who Blogs Too Much.

Years ago, at UW Law School, I started a faculty email list to chat about various Law School things, back when it seemed really cool to have chatty, conversational threads in an email list. It was called Factalk. We still have it, though I don't manage it personally anymore, but it's mostly a place to dump announcements. In the early days some people liked chattiness and some didn't, so I set up a second list for the chatty people. I asked for suggestions for names, and picked Tower, which refers to the part of the law school building where the faculty offices are. (Here in Madison, six stories got labeled a "Tower" but that was, I'll say in defense of Madison, many decades ago.) When I announced the name as Tower, somebody accused me of naming the list after myself, on the theory that "Althouse" means "tall house," which just goes to show how uncharitable academics are capable of being--and how unfamiliar with foreign languages. (My name isn't Altacasa, so it's not a Spanish "Alt/alta." "House" is clearly from "haus," so it's the German "Alt." The name means "old house." But I'd rather have people think of me as tall than as old, so what the hell! But I am more old than tall, especially compared to an ant. (That's a conundrum. Don't bug me about it!))

So that's all to say that I'm an overblogger and I've been an overemailer. I have an overflow blog, and I once had an overflow email list. Ah, but the Tower list withered away. And Factalk is not an very interesting place to write either. I've started other email lists: Civpro (now Civilprocedure) and Fedcourts, which aren't very active anymore. I believe the email lists are dying out because people are weary of spam. Or maybe because the people who kept them going would rather blog (for a lot of good reasons!). Fedcourts was the first law faculty email list, I believe. Email me if you think there's an older one. Factalk was started long ago too, back when you had to beg people to activate their email, and often met with blank stares or deep anxiety about it. When I first proposed Factalk, I had to put a paper memo in every faculty member's mailbox, explaining what it would be and even what email was and how to activate it. Another lawprof wrote me a memo begging me not to do it, saying what a terrible and inappropriate thing it was, because it would exclude the people who don't want to use email. But it hadn't been that long before that I couldn't believe that memos would be sent out and that if you didn't check something on your computer you'd never know that someone had sent you a memo.

Posted: Fri - April 30, 2004 at 07:48 AM      

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