From:
Dan Jellinek
Date:
2007 Jan 09 19:27 UTC
Short link
OK all, here it is.
The results of the recent survey about posting limits on the list was close
enough to have taken until now for the Steering Group to have come up with
an answer, so sorry about the delay.
A total of 44 votes were cast and the summary is:
Leave the limit: 20
Double the limit: 13
Variations on double the limit: 3
[These were people who were OK with doubling but had other comments as well,
as follows:
- Can it be 4 every 48 hours? I don't have time every day but when I do have
time to post then I find the number restrictive!
- Either double the 24 limit or reset at midnight - I can't remember the
exact time of my penultimate post of the previous day until my message is
bounced.
- Personally I would like to see more than two posts per 12 hours. But would
also be OK with 2 every 12.]
Remove the limit completely: 7
Of which one said to review the situation after three months.]
Further restriction to two posts per 48 hours: 1
[Whose comment was: 'the forum is being dominated by too few and this might
encourage others to participate more']
Our reading of it is that this is about 20 for status quo and 23 for
something else, with the 13 asking to double the limit being the
'first past the post' majority.
We are therefore proposing to increase the limit to four messages per day
as soon as e-democracy.org can make this happen.
We will do this for an initial trial period of three months and then
ask the list for its feedback again, using a similar process.
2. Promoting and evaluating the list
Many people offered really useful comments about the list. Some found
fault with some of the rules and/or topics and/or individual posters,
but in general all were positive about the existence and value of the
Issues Forum.
Many people mentioned increasing the number of people on the list and
we will be following this up by trying to improve the website and
raising its profile through publicity.
We also want to understand more about its value and begin to quantify
what it offers, so that we can promote it more effectively to the
Council and other public bodies that we want to engage with.
We will therefore be working the people from e-democracy.org to look
at a number of ways of evaluating the usage of the list. Suggestions
so far include:
- number of posts per day/week/month
- number of topics per day/week/month
- number of different people posting per day/week/month
- average number of posts per topic per month
We also expect to repeat the parts of this up this survey that
provided qualitative feedback from participants.
Any and all ideas on this front very welcome.
Dan Jellinek, Mark Walker and Mike Snewin.