Fairport List

[fstix (Michael)]

After about 7 years on the Fairport List (mcvax), I've just now unsubscribed.  The signal to noise ratio has leaned far too heavily towards the noise in recent times for my liking, and the last few days' worth of essentially personal emails - literally dozens of them, with no great purpose - inflicted on my inbox proved too much.

Just in case anyone asks.

Best of luck to those remaining.  I'll stick around here though!

MH

[Alex Lyons]

I can't blame you on the evidence of the past few days, Michael. I'd fortunately set a filter to sift them all off into a separate folder, usually to peruse at my leisure, but this week to delete more or less sight unseen. I'm not sure what makes the half dozen or so people think that it's OK to bombard several hundred subscribers with - yesterday - about 100 utterly pointless emails. The over-zealous moderation is causing a few problems here at the moment, but there's an example of what can happen on an unmoderated forum.

[NeilMcLaughlin]

After about 7 years on the Fairport List (mcvax), I've just now unsubscribed.  The signal to noise ratio has leaned far too heavily towards the noise in recent times for my liking, and the last few days' worth of essentially personal emails - literally dozens of them, with no great purpose - inflicted on my inbox proved too much.

Just in case anyone asks.

Best of luck to those remaining.  I'll stick around here though!

MH

well, FStix, I certainly agree about the level of noise/personal and off-topic blather of late on the list, but I've been what would be considered a "lurker" there for years myself in the digest format, which I find quite easy to quickly scan through or disregard totally if it all looks as bad as that.  There is something that will crop up once in a while that is worthwhile that I don't see here, but it has gotten to be much more rare.  Good to know you'll be sticking around here, at least.

I really do find this format more user friendly, which is why I never post to but subscribe to both the Fairport and RT list digest versions.  The number of times people snark about the way people post to the lists is enough to keep me from even making the attempt.  I love that you can even preview how it looks prior to posting here.

[fstix (Michael)]

well, FStix, I certainly agree about the level of noise/personal and off-topic blather of late on the list, but I've been what would be considered a "lurker" there for years myself in the digest format, which I find quite easy to quickly scan through or disregard totally if it all looks as bad as that.

Thanks Neil,

I can't imagine scrolling up and down through that amount of **** in a digest, in the vague hope of finding something worthwhile though! 

Re certain complainers on the RT list in particular (in the minority, I might add) - at least one advantage of the email is you can just block their address and never see their venom.  I guess I could have just blocked the half-dozen or so people on the Fairport list, but enough was more than enough, really...

[Mark]

The trounle with the fairport list in particular is that there are too many people who have a vested interest in the band and are only too happy to let everyone else know it. I cancelled my subscription over a year ago.

The over-zealous moderation is causing a few problems here at the moment, but there's an example of what can happen on an unmoderated forum.

I would tend to agree Alex, and sometimes find that the moderation here tends to mean that debate is stultified - leading to days of blandness. BUT to be fair to the mods - I find that even if some posts are removed as being over the top or too controversial, that is normally the end of it.

I feel reasonably content in being able to say what I want because I know that whilst I may be moderated, it is normally because I have gone too far in trying to provoke a reaction, and that the removal of said posts will (normally) be the only come back!

[Andy]

If'n you don't like it, don't read it. If'n you do, do. Let's not get into a slagging match.

Signal to noise here is a subject of criticism elsewhere.

Who gives a flying duck really?

[koho (Koen)]

I have also finally jumped ship and unsubbed though I was just a lurker in recent years. It has degenerated into chitchat, and on digest it's as unreadable/uninteresting as any other chitchat chatbox. So why was I on it still? Snippets of news I guess, but this here is the better place for that.
It's 5 to 10 people talking to each other, wholly taken over by chatters ... always the same ones, often reposting entire emails with just something like (mindnumbing internet language) "LOL" or "ROFLAO" (sp?) added. Either that or the list has hardly anything at all for ages. If a topic is started which is actually about Fairport or such like, it quickly turns into further nonsense blah blah. Well, it has been like this for quite some time now, and it might well happen to most mailing lists, which is why I am only now on the low traffic Iain Matthews mailing list. Not that that doesn't have its moments of chitchat, but at least it's not much - and I kinda need to be on it coz I started up that mailing list years ago and therefore am moderator (with nothing to do I might add)!
So fare thee well FC list - it used to be a nice mailing list which had genuine r/l comraderie (Crop 1998 springs to mind) and thanx James for maintaining it and good luck to 'em.
Up the fez

(well really it's no Us and Them thing of course - I mean what are we talking about - but the recent FC list is the best reason why forums like Talkawhile are so user friendly - just look up topics of interest)

[Suzanne]

I read the Fairport list for a week before unsubscribing.  I felt intimidated, persecuted and unwelcome - and I hadn't even dared to submit a post!  It struck me that the list consisted of approximately 6-10 people who were close friends with each other - all of whom had vested interests - and took offence at anybody else either joining in or posting something that didn't agree with their views.  The time I actually "joined" was when there was that mailing list that people could sign up to (the one that Simon Nicol said on here was okay) and the outcry from somebody who, as I understand it, is Fairport's own PR person was very shocking to me.  The inference from one of those emails was that the list was only for people who were close friends of Fairport and other people should keep away.  That's when I realised that, as I am not a friend of Fairport's, I should not remain on the list and so I left.

[jude]

I joined that list once for a very short time.

Mostly I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

If Suzanne's impression was right, then I don't think I'd want people like that as my friends.

Dearie me!!

Jude

[Keith]

For the last few days there seems to have been lots of pseudo-dating going on, which is pretty weird in a list subscribed to by hundreds of people. I have never posted, nor intend to - I only keep an eye out for anything of direct relevance to the band, which is virtually nothing at the moment.

[YaBB Master (Colin)]

In a good mail reader the topics on the list should thread and be split up much like a bulletin board. However over the last few days this does seem to have gone horribly wrong and some very interesting posts on the Fairport List have been drowned in rubbish.
Some topics even look deliberately disrupted (by changing the topic when replying).

And again. Very few posts on this board get moderated. It's mostly a matter of clearing up the silly and me to's, in order to keep things readable. If anybody thinks that a post of theirs has been unfairly deleted, please contact Nick or Myself. We can put it back, or put a copy in 'About this board' where you can contest it.

We also try to keep the noise in the Arms, which is opt-in.

[PLW (Peter)]

I wish I had the faintest idea what you were all on about. What is The Fairport List?

[abby (tank girl)]

I wish I had the faintest idea what you were all on about. What is The Fairport List?

(sigh of relief)
thank god someone asked!

i have no idea either!

[david stevenson]

I wish I had the faintest idea what you were all on about. What is The Fairport List?

(sigh of relief)
thank god someone asked!

i have no idea either!

I thought it was when every member of the band started leaning in one direction.........

[Alex Lyons]

Just an email discussion list - 500 or so people, you send an email and everyone on the list receives a copy. Sort of like here but instead of just browsing through a website, you get everything delivered to your email inbox. It started in about 1996 and was originally quite a good place for Fairport news, gig reviews etc (again, much like here) but a lot of people feel it's degenerated a bit into a perpetual conversation between half a dozen or so people.

[abby (tank girl)]

ah.
thankyou!

[David W]

The problem with the list, from which I have also recent unsubscribed after about 8 years mostly of lurking, is that it is totally dominated by about four or fve people who tend to band together against anyone who disagrees with them.

Another issue is the blatant hostility which is shown towards the existence of talkawhile by certain listmembers who really should know better.

Jackdaw

(feel free to moderate if you wish)

[PLW (Peter)]

Just an email discussion list - 500 or so people, you send an email and everyone on the list receives a copy. Sort of like here but instead of just browsing through a website, you get everything delivered to your email inbox. It started in about 1996 and was originally quite a good place for Fairport news, gig reviews etc (again, much like here) but a lot of people feel it's degenerated a bit into a perpetual conversation between half a dozen or so people.

Sounds like a terrible idea. Imagine getting all the tripe that gets written on here landing in your inbox everyday!!!

[leahdon (Donna)]

Its a shame that some people have felt unable to join/stay joined to the Fairport List. 

Without debating the merits of the FC list as opposed to Talkawhile (both of which have advantages and disadvantages), the actual situation of the last week or so is that we have had a couple of people joining the list, who have done so by getting involved and asking lots of questions. At times the replies have gone off on tangents, and yes, ended up with some bizarre discussions.

Its a shame that people have felt that the list is 'too' linked to the band. In actual fact, this board is much closer to the band, and for the most part the people who are closest to the band (to the best of my knowledge) are generally on both (with one notable exception). The dfiference is that when the discussions move off-topic, the moderators on here can move the discussion to a more suitable location/thread, which the FC list can't.

D
xx

[leahdon (Donna)]

Sorry for the double post.  Was going to edit my original post, but realised I can't, or at least, don't know how.

Anyway, the other thing about the FC list, which possibly makes the users (including me) less likely to appear inclusive, is that we know that the posts only go to those who are specifically subscribed to it. I can see that if you subscribe in the middle of a discussion (or a number of discussions) that appear completely off topic and maybe even seem to be private conversations, it would be completely off-putting, and if we don't know there are new people around, we do have conversations as if everyone knows what we are talking about. If that has proved to be the case, I can only apologise on my own behalf.

I believe it is less likely to happen here because everyone knows that the threads that aren't in the Corporation Arms are visible to anyone, anywhere in the world.  You can even get to them via google (which I just did, although you need to have a idea of a couple of keywords to find them), so people are more circumspect here.

D
xx