Newsletters vs. techwr-l

[geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]

 Matt Danda wondered if it was worthwhile repeating
 information already discussed on the list in the form of a
 newsletter article. In a word, "yes". In several words: "I
 just did it recently for Intercom", and have had some
 positive feedback from readers.

 Matt gave the example of STC newsletters. Don't forget,
 Matt, that STC has some 20 000 members, and techwr-l only
 has ca. 2000-3000, many of whom are not STC members. So
 there's some overlap, but there's also an audience of
 around (say) 18 000 people who aren't on techwr-l. In
 addition, a newsletter article worth writing will
 _summarize_ the techwr-l thread in a logical form, with
 introduction, results, and conclusions; our unedited
 discussions, while fascinating, would make for utterly
 incompetent newsletter articles because they're
 disorganized (comments arrive out of temporal or logical
 sequence), include tons of redundant requotes so that
 nobody forgets the thread, and are often full of typos.

 One note: If you do summarize something into an article, it
 would be polite to at least acknowledge the people who
 provided the information. Although you don't strictly
 speaking need someone's permission to quote them, ideally,
 you should get their permission to acknowledge them at the
 end of the article; not everyone will want to be associated
 with your article, particularly if it's on a subject as
 controversial as education and productivity.

 --Geoff Hart     @8^{)}     geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
 Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.

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