by Peggy Robin
I've been moderating the Cleveland Park Listserv since its founding in November of 1999. Today, out of the blue, just for my own curiosity, I decided to do a little data diving. My question: What do people use the Listserv for? I took a look at the last 450 posts, starting from about mid-day today and going back over the last 450 posts, putting them into seven different categories.
The results are in the table below.
CATEGORY | Number Of Posts | Percent Rounded to .00 |
1. ISO & REPLIES, RECOMMENDATIONS | 102 | 22.67% |
2. FOR SALE | 34 | 7.56% |
3. FREE | 71 | 15.78% |
4. IN-HOME SERVICES (childcare, eldercare, housecleaning) | 8 | 1.78% |
5. ANNOUNCEMENTS & COMMUNITY NEWS | 112 | 24.89% |
6. DISCUSSION OF LOCAL ISSUES / COMMENTS ON LIFE IN THE
NEIGHBORHOOD | 38 | 8.46% |
7. SPONSORED MESSAGES | 85 | 18.9% |
TOTALS | 450 | 100.04% |
NOTES:
ISO & REPLIES. I expected this to be the biggest category, but it was edged out by Community Announcements & News by just under 2 points.
FOR SALE. Messages in this category are all free posts for Listserv Members. Free use of the Listserv to sell things is fairly restricted: Only in-boundary members (in 20008, 20016, 20007 or 20015) get to post things for sale and the total asking price of items in the message must be $1000 or under; otherwise, they are asked to paying a one-time sponsorship fee, or join the Listserv's Premium Membership program for an annual fee of $50. Those for-sale posts were counted under the category of SPONSORED MESSAGES.
FREE. I was not surprised to see the FREE category beat the FOR SALE category by almost 2-to-1 (71/34). Giving things to your neighbors and getting things from your neighbors (sometimes the same thing, multiple times -- see the famous moving Cleveland Park piano! -- has been one of the wonders of the Listserv for over 25 years!
IN-HOME SERVICES. We allow two categories on in-home workers to advertise their services on the Listserv without paying any sort of advertising fee: in-home caregivers (either child care givers such as nannies or babysitters, or elder care givers such as home health aides and LPNs) and housecleaners. The free ads can be posted by the individual worker or by a current or recent employer on the worker's behalf, but nanny agencies and cleaning services in charge of multiple workers have to pay for their ads.
ANNOUCEMENTS AND COMMUNITY NEWS. There's a whole lot in this category. All ANC posts, all MPD reports, All ALERTDC messages, all DPW reminders (e.g. for the "Trash Slide" due to a holiday); all DCPL and DCPS notices, all notices from our civic and community organizations, public school sports teams & clubs, student performances, and other student activities, and our community aid groups (Goods for Good DC and Ward 3 Mutual Aid Network)....and, I'm sure there are a few dozen more, but I don't need to list them all. Still, I was a bit surprised to see this turned out to the the single biggest category on the Listserv.
DISCUSSION OF LOCAL ISSUES/COMMENTS ON LIFE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. This past month was unusual, in that there wasn't a hot button issue on the table, generating lots of argument and attempts to persuade. If you look at the home page, which shows the monthly posting totals, you may notice that September and October in an election year tend to be the busiest months. Also May and June in a year with a primary election. A lively discussion on some controversial proposal can cause a big bump-up in posting levels, adding another 10 or even 20 messages a day. But over the posting period in my sample, there was no such issue - hence the relatively low discussion figures in the table.
SPONSORED MESSAGES. We love our sponsors! They are the people who make it possible for us to turn out this online community publication that goes out to 12,400+ subscribers 365 days a year. Every now & again, we get a complaint that there are too many ads. But we also hear from people who say they were glad to hire a tutor who really helped their child, or find a career/life coach who pulled them out of a rut and got their life rebooted -- or found a computer guru who literally rebooted the computer they thought was dead. Of course, I'd be happy to see this category get even bigger, and if you would like to promote your business or your professional services on the Listserv, just drop me an email & I'll help you get started -- clevelandparklistservmoderator@gmail.com (clevelandparklistservmoderator @ gmail dot com).
I'll end this presentation with a note of thanks to all the posters in all categories and all the readers, too. You make the Cleveland Park Listserv what it is....and that's a really good thing!
-----------------------
Still LIfe with Robin is posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
No comments:
Post a Comment