Re: st: Gentle resister

[John Antonakis <John.Antonakis@unil.ch>]

Great post, Sam. Like you and everyone else, we appreciate work that has 
gone to all this. Personally, I much prefer to the listserv e-mail format.

Silly question--I have not figured this out yet--is there a way to get 
the forum to send us an e-mail when a posting is made? Then some of the 
diehards can still have their e-mail format--and then still go on the 
forum when interested in the discussion.

Best,
J.

__________________________________________

John Antonakis
Professor of Organizational Behavior
Director, Ph.D. Program in Management

Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC)
University of Lausanne
Internef #618
CH-1015 Lausanne-Dorigny
Switzerland
Tel ++41 (0)21 692-3438
Fax ++41 (0)21 692-3305
http://www.hec.unil.ch/people/jantonakis

Associate Editor:
The Leadership Quarterly
Organizational Research Methods
__________________________________________

On 15.04.2014 00:54, Lucas wrote:
> I appreciate all the hard work you have done, Marcello, and I
> appreciate all the hard work of everyone involved in the list,
> including the hard hardware work of Bill Mahoney.  People like Bill
> are often the unsung heroes and heroines of all the analyses analysts
> conduct and present. And, I appreciate that change is inevitable.
>
> That said, I will sound a, hmm, how to put it--a less than celebratory
> note about the new forum format.
>
> I just registered, and perhaps it will grow on me.  I think it
> probably will not.  I find it a bit . . . incongruous.
>
> On the one hand, massive computer storage capability and amazingly
> advanced search capability together render "organizing" material
> completely unnecessary--at least, the poor organization humans do.
> Google is one of the most, if not THE most successful companies on the
> planet. And their core product, the door through which 90 percent of
> their customers originally entered, is a simple square box in which
> one can type anything a keyboard allows and some things a keyboard
> does not (e.g., images), and the magic of google will bring--without
> ANY human categorization effort--relevant material to one's screen.
>
> This is how the retiring statalist worked, especially the archives--no
> one needed to categorize anything. The text itself was the source for
> search engines.
>
> Now, with the "advance" of the forum, instead of mining the steadily
> growing stockpile of information, people are supposed to "tag" their
> posts and, more important, place them in the appropriate collection:
> 1)general, 2)mata, 3)how the forum works, and 4)sandpile, er, uh, I
> mean box.  Why?  We can see the problems with this approach already.
>
> First, there have *already* been mis-classifications, which would seem
> to increase the work for someone (or, eventually, it will be very
> tough to find the relevant material). It is unclear whether and how
> such misclassifications will be corrected.
>
> Second, many postings combine material--this is the way of work, and
> human thought, and cannot be easily eradicated (without prohibitive
> costs in intelligibility, if it is even possible).
>
> Third, navigability has already been questioned.  The solution is for
> forum users to set up stuff on their browser. Again, why? Just to get
> the functionality old statalist had for someone arriving the very
> first time?  This is progress?
>
> Again, I completely understand the need to retire equipment, and thank
> those who managed aging equipment as long as they did.  I am truly
> grateful.
>
> I just wonder--why do we reinvent the wheel and call it progress,
> when, instead of a 360-degree round rolling object we now have a
> kludgy object that has two straight sides attached to one long curve.
> It does not roll.  It does not rest.  It does not work as well as what
> we had before.  Why don't we just move the wheel that works to a new
> platform?
>
> Anyway, maybe experience will help me see and feel this as an advance.
>   But, judging from many other "advances," I can say--it is quite
> possible that most will experience a loss of functionality, and, while
> they may accept it (because they appreciate the hard work of those who
> run it day-in and day-out, and there is no clear alternative), it will
> reduce the utility of the resource for them.
>
> Respectfully
> Sam
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