Thanks to UUpdater

As I’m getting back on the (writing) horse, I want to thank the UUpdater, who ran UUpdates.net for many years, but who laid down the work late last year.

It’s possible it may come back if someone picks it up — all the tools are there — but it may be better to let it go, even with regrets. It was valuable for lubricating the once vibrant UU blogosphere, but that is only a thin shadow of what was. Even its successor, Facebook groups, seem to have declined without a clear replacement, official, formal or otherwise. Denominational communications were once its lifeblood — to which I add the twice-yearly publication of the UUWorld and a tendency to make General Assembly virtual — and the relative silence should worry anyone concerned about the health of the UUA. I’ll leave that for others to consider.

For now, thanks to the UUpdater for all you accomplished. You deserve thanks and praise.

The age of the mailing list is over

The email mailing list, I mean. The social Internet mode many of us started with.

For myself, I’ve read, organized, managed and written on mailing lists for well more than a decade, but these days I can hardly be bothered. Most of the ones I read have dried up. The ones I’ve recently started hardly moved. It was easier when it was the only game in town.

But no more. The problem is that a lot of us still depend on them, including the generic us of Unitarian Universalists, who for our size have a menagerie of mailing lists. Which is OK — no technology really dies, even cassette tapes and punch cards — but there are opportunities lost by not moving to something more public, interactive, selective and robust.

Thoughts?