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Something Different Every Day

September 17, 2008

Drowning in listservs

My listservs are going crazy right now.  Child_lit, CCBC, adbooks, and yalsa-bk have been dropping an amazing number of emails into my box, to the point where I can’t begin to keep up.  What kicked off the frenzy of posts?  The answer to that would be who rather than what:  Sarah Palin.

First came the intense round of discussion on whether or not one should use a listserv with 501(c)3 status to discuss politics.  Once it was officially barred on yalsa-bk, the discussion turned toward how perplexing it was for an organization that dedicates itself to protecting free speech to be telling its listserv members what they can’t discuss.  Then came the dozens of messages beginning “I know we’re not supposed to be discussing this, but…”  Interesting, but yalsa-bk is a busy listserv already.  Those YA librarians have a lot to say about books, programming, teenagers, and most especially about graphic novels.  Add politics on top, and a deluge of email results.

Child_Lit has always come in waves, where one day the only message will be “Is anyone there?” and the next someone will post a provocative comment and the members write back in force.  Ever since the announcement of Sarah Palin, one discussion flows into the next and the number of messages is just tremendous.  Interesting, again, but…I’m drowning!

I salute the moderators of adbooks and CCBC for keeping their discussions focused, though even they have had a hard time reining in some of the discussions.

What do you do when your listservs go crazy?  Delete without reading?  Unsubscribe temporarily?  Or do you just try to keep up with the volume and figure that it’ll die down eventually and you’d better enjoy it while you can?  That’s what I’m doing, but if it keeps up like it’s been the past couple of days, I’m not sure I can continue all the way till November.

Edited to add:  So far today, I have deleted 400 messages!  Sure hope none of those were from my coworkers that got mixed into the listserv tsunami.

posted by Susan at 8:13 am | Comments (3)