ASAE’s ListServs - A Brief Rant
I haven’t been blogging much lately largely due to an extremely busy schedule but that doesn’t mean I am not keeping watch on what is going on in the association and broader worlds around me. So while I hate to come back with a rant, this one is well deserved and probably long overdue. One thing that I spend a lot of time checking out everyday is ASAE’s listservs as I learn a lot and on occasion have the ability to share something that I know.
Admittedly listservs are pretty dated technology but nonetheless they are still somewhat effective to share and exhange information. My frustration from the beginning with ASAE’s listserv was the inability to easily reply to a post without getting barraged with an overabundance of “Out of Office” responses from those who are subscribed but away from the office.
Today was really a breaking point for me. I responded to Caron Mason’s post on a few Movable Type questions that she had because I had some decent answers for her. I spent a good deal of time providing a thoughtful answer and adding links that I thought she would find useful. Now this has nothing to do with Caron, just setting the stage for what happened next.
I hit the submit button knowing what was to come but hoping for the best. Well the best didn’t happen, instead I instantly received over 30 out of office responses (and many more to come I am sure) clogging my already overflowing email inbox. Come on ASAE give me and the other members a break. There has got to be a better technology available to serve a similar task. What I did was a good thing and part of the knowledge sharing and community building process that makes belonging to an association so great. Sure I could have responded directly to Caron, but that would have constrained the knowledge sharing effort and only benefited her when others may have had a similar question or more experience with the topic that they could have contributed.
Why is it that instead of a smooth process I got punished instead? Anybody else have as much of a problem with this as I do? Anybody come up with a way to deal with the crash of OOO replies? Anybody from ASAE listening and can give me some hope on this front? I love sharing what I know as I am sure that many other members do as well, but if all that I get in return in punished than there is no sense in participating. Technology is supposed to work for us not against us. Let me know what you think.
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My name is Dave Sabol and I work at the intersection of technology, online learning and knowledge management for 
This has been a frustration of mine as well, and I think part of the reason I’ve not spent nearly as much time on the ASAE listservs as I used to. While an imperfect solution, I’ve set up a rule to direct any messages with “Out of Office” or similar phrasing in the subject into a folder. Now that requires that I check that folder for the times that people I’m directly contacting are out, but it does help cut down on the inbox flood when I reply to a listserv message.
There really must be a better technology than this one to accomplish the same level of knowledge sharing.
Feel your pain too and logged on here to give the same tip as I now read from Scott. And yes it helps but isn’t the final solution. Would be interesting to ask the association world at large who’s solved it.
The NTEN listserv doesn’t do this… they should ask Holly Ross what NTEN is using.
Scott and Peggy, I agree that the work-around would work but for me using technology to solve a problem that technology is creating is not only counter-productive but also more work than I want to put into it. I guess you could say I am being lazy and perhaps contributing to the problem but I guess I think that I shouldn’t have the problem to solve in the first place. I know you both know what I am saying.
Fred, I agree that other sites/orgs that I belong to don’t have the problem so it’s obviously been solved already, ASAE just needs to get out there and figure out what to do and how to do it. If I’m not mistaken I remember hearing Andy Steggles talk about HigherLogic and their solution to the problem with their eGroups product.
I know that I am not the first person to have the problem nor am I the first person to express my frustration with this…so why has it taken so long to fix it…I would think that due to it’s popularity and usage it would be a key technology initiative.
I just set up an auto-filter to trash rule. But I’d be willing to bet there’s a way to configure Lyris to dump those messages automatically without them even going out to the list in the first place….which I’m sure the digest folks would appreciate.
A few months ago I inadvertently unsubbed from ASAE’s listservs. I didn’t notice the digests were gone until I returned from a short trip to a lower than expected volume of e-mail. I haven’t resubbed and honestly I don’t miss them at all. There have been a few blog posts about this, including one I wrote about my experience back in July:
http://caeexam.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-dont-really-miss-asae-listserves .html
ASAE’s unwillingness (or inability) to engage in the online conversation about their listservs is unfortunate.
Hi Dave-
I don’t respond much to the ASAE list servs, so I have never had the exact problem to which you are referring. I can certainly see how that would be frustrating though… I’ll use Elizabeth and the others’ filter should I decide to respond to a message as I move forward, although I agree with you that we shouldn’t have to use technology to fix a problem created by another piece of technology.
My biggest problem with the list servs is that as I try to read all of the messages within each day’s digest, I have to scroll through message after message that contains the message before it, and then the message before that one, and it goes on and on. I don’t know that people even think about what they’re doing to all of us digest users when they just respond, and leave the whole chain in the reply… I’m sure everyone else has had the same issue…
I haven’t boycotted the list servs yet, but I have tried to make my voice heard to the technology folks at ASAE about how this really frustrates me. No response…
I am with you Bruce. The scrolling through and hunting for the actual message in the daily digest is the absolute worst part. I can deal with the out of office if I send a message. But hunting for content is a bad thing.
We have Higher Logic’s egroup platform and digests are so easy to read.
One of my biggest pet peeves with the listservs is that I cannot easily search and find answers to my questions without having to post. Yes–it’s possible. But it’s hard, and so few ever bother.
That means I get the same questions repeated within weeks or even days of each other. And that is a waste of my time, and everyone else’s time. It’s even a waste of time for the person asking the question. They could have just gone to a really great search tool and found the answers that 20 people posted last week, right?
ASAE trained people to use these listservs. It’s time they trained the same people to use something easier and better. If it goes the way it should, the biggest adjustment should be the technology, not user experience or behavior.
Hi all, I am on the Tech Council and I can tell you that ASAE has been actively looking into these issues. I can’t really say more, which is annoying, but watch this space (or their space… or whatever).