James, You're correct, but I'n not sure what you're describing is lurking. Many years ago I was a sysop on a Novell newsgroup / usenet supporting a commercial companies products for free, why? Well when I needed the answer to a question I would go to the support group and look for answers, it just so happened that I knew the answers to a lot of questions that others were posting so I would answer them. Novell staff monitored this group, but did not provide answers to questions. If an individual posted enough quality asnwers they would invite you to become a sysop (system operator). The point I'm making is that a list server such as this distributes to all members, just because you may not be interested in 90% of what comes your way does not make you a lurker. When you need an answer or advice you often get it, that's the point right? If I know the answer to a questioned asked I will answer it, it maybe once a week, once a month, once a year. On 5/10/07, James Howison <jhowison@syr.edu> wrote:
There's an excellent, well known study of the Apache user support lists which, if I may hazard a summary, found that 98% of the time spent with the list was reading, not posting, and that the primary motivation for being on the list, by far, was learning by reading (thus observing the question/answer exchanges). This was enough to keep enough people on the list so that questions could be answered without great effort because one of the group attracted by reading knew the answer 'off the top of their head'.
So the lurking, and the learning by lurking, is crucial to the 'critical mass' of the list. Learning by talking/doing, as John writes below, is great, but learning by reading is also crucial to the effectiveness of these task-oriented communities. Lakhani, K. and von Hippel, E. (2003). How open source software works: "free" user-to-user assistance. Research Policy, 32:923–943.
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/lakhanivonhippelusersupport.pdf
Cheers, James
-- Martin Garthwaite PhD candidate, London Knowledge Lab www.lkl.ac.uk +447957 764819 Skype id mgarthwaite1330 MS IM marting@gmail.com