Nancy, I come to the conclusion that I do not fit with this organization. I have promised myself that I will not respond to anything I read from this Air-1. This is my last. I am sure that many people will shout "at last" from this announcement. I have tried to be self-critical and reflective of my role in what has transpired. I have pulled every email that I wrote and shared them with my colleagues to assess my part. Clearly I have had a chilling, if not hostile effect. To that end I deeply apologize to all. To my credit I tried to address ideas not personalities and have not always been successful. I am human. I suspect that I had my doctorate before some of the members were born. I have been involved with the internet when it was still owned by the defense department. I have read hundreds of dissertations and taught research methods in both industry and academia. I have never encountered a more sophomoric group than the crowd that regularly participates in Air-1. I make a distinction here. If as alleged there are 1000 subscribers to this listserv then the vast majority are lurking and silent. I wonder why! I suspect that most of them only have a peripheral interest and most get nothing of consequence from the dialogues. A hostile and defensive minority rules. I have every publication of the listserv. It is my intention to do both a quantitative and qualitative examination of this publication. I suspect that less than 50 people are active. I suspect that they do not represent the vast majority of the members of AOIR. I want to help build a science of Internet studies. I sincerely believe that the vocal minority of AOIR is not the group that can do it. You are an expert in communication and if you cannot see the inherent biases in your utterances it is not for me to correct you. I have observed that you do not take responsibility for the nuance of what you say and this response is no exception. I am weary of playing with children. If there are some adults out there you are welcome at http://dialecticxy.org and The Center For Internet Research http://tcfir.org. Be well Back to my goats, Reid -----Original Message----- From: Nancy Baym [mailto:nbaym@ku.edu] Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:34 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; wrc@tcfir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] (no subject)

I understand that they are young and that they are computer scientists.

Does anyone realize how astoundingly irrelevent and pseudo-scientific these remarks seem? Are you proud that you made them?

I don't see why it is either irrelevant or psuedoscientific to say that young people whose training and expertise is in designing computer systems are not as likely to be as savvy about communication or social scientific research methods or as well attuned to how those affect their own sites as people who specialize in those topics and skills. As Ive said on last.fm, I don't think it makes sense for the developers to also be in charge of user-assessment and communication with users. Those are different skill sets. In my discussions with the last.fm staff their status as developers rather than social scientists or PR people is a point they themselves make in defense of their communicative shortcomings. I think one of the critical problems in the future of Web2 sites is how well those who are designing them will be able to successfully understand what makes their users want to participate, how their users use the sites, and how they can best interact with their users. I would expect people who have more life experience and who specialize in understanding people and communication to be better at that. Given my own age and background, I would not expect others to think I'd be great at writing code that will capture the spirit of youth, nor would I take it as an insult if people noticed that about me. Nancy