Lurkers?

(July 2010) Mailing lists and social websites can be really useful tools for dog people.  You can learn from, collaborate with, and help people you see infrequently if at all.   Such tools become a big club where like-minded people gather round the fire, so to speak, and share their experiences.   Like all such gathering spots, though, it often feels like just a few people are doing all the contributing and too many others are simply along for the ride...

Here’s an exchange between a list member bemoaning the high number of lurkers and someone trying to explain why there might be so many wallflowers.

--- In LetsDiscussJudging@yahoogroups.com, Peggy <pmick@e...> wrote:

I am glad that the list is growing and that the list's website is drawing lots of attention. However, I do have a problem with list members who do not participate in discussions...lurkers, as they are known. It does make me wonder...if they don't want to participate, why are they here?

Answer #1: They are participating.   They’re like a large group of friends at a party, where most of the gang is listening, spellbound, to a few of them who wandered off last week and had the most amazing adventures, and are here telling everyone who’ll listen.   Nobody wants to interrupt because they feel their story of taking Junior in for his haircut is pointless after hearing how you saved the world from Martians! with a hairclip, some gum, and an old transistor radio.

Answer #1a: Some of you have enough experience, and relate it well enough, that you have attained a professorial aura, and the majority of the students are afraid to speak up for fear of embarrassment.   Luckily for me I don't embarrass easily.

Answer #2: This list has become like a really good, chatty newsletter, where lots of useful, even inside, info gets printed.   There is a merry band of frequent contributors, and a fair number who drift in and out, but it’s such a good read that it has many, many subscribers.

Answer #3: Yes, there are people who wait to pounce on an unflattering word and run with it to their betters, crying "see, see, Master, I have spied for you and I have uncovered treachery!"   [I’ve gotta stop watching so much PBS].  They usually create their own downfall.   Much the same happens with folks who think that they’ll be on top somehow if they just manipulate A and B into hating each other.  Screw’em [oops, I know, language, language]

Answer #4: Jeez, Peggy, some of us just have nothin’ much to offer.  I mean, how many times can I tell my “the dog ate my underwear” ring story before people think I'm a one-trick pony?  OK, sure, there’s always “the other dog fell down, pooped on the go-around, and backed away from the judge on the table, and judge X STILL gave it the win,” but that too ages rather quickly.  Of course, not many people know about the time a spectating [is that a word?] judge put her hand over my wife’s mouth and dragged her away from the ring to keep my wife from going over the fence after the distaff half of a certain husband-wife judging team chose, let us say, unwisely, but is this really the forum for such a tale?

Answer #5: Do we need an answer #5? I think not, but I can’t stop.   Peggy, just remember what Alice Roosevelt said: “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, you come sit by me.”

Steve

So, yes, there are lots of people on your mailing list who hardly ever contribute to the conversation.   But now you know, they’re not lazy; they’re either shy, unsure of themselves, or simply up to no good!