K-Spam out of Control?
Sapna Shah
Issue date: 10/25/06 Section: KSG News
K-Spam - emails sent to the entire KSG community - is on the rise this semester. The increase in mass emails sent by KSG students has sparked heated email exchanges between students frustrated over emailing etiquette on the KSG server. Meanwhile, many of these emails sent by students have been sent en masse unintentionally.
KSG Information Services' recent upgrade to Lyris listserv software catalyzed this electronic controversy. Testing during the slow summer season worked out most of the kinks, but not all of them. Unsuspecting students soon discovered that sometimes "Reply" on a listserv meant "Reply all" even though only one name appeared in the "To" field. Now, that glitch has been resolved in most cases, but the occasional flaw continues to anger some students and raise questions about whether the open listserv should be better managed.
Public rants that ensued on the listserv over accidental "mass" emails typically ended with a cautionary email from a KSG student urging for the mindful use of listservs. Keatra Fuller (MPP2) sent one of those perturbed emails. After hearing murmurs and gripes about the email chains in the forum, she came home to find her inbox flooded and reacted promptly.
Fuller believes that dialogue is valuable but that "logistically it doesn't make sense to have a debate with 1000 other people over email."
Taufiq Rahim (MPP1), who also sent out an admonishing response to an email chain, shares Fuller's frustration. He believes emailing the listserv is too often misused as an outlet for discussions that should be channeled into other venues.
"It makes sense to have different forums for different things. There should be topic areas or discussion boards online for those types of debates," Rahim said. "The flurry of emails sent by KSSG election candidates should have been compiled and placed in one place on the intranet."
Shouvik Banerjee (MPP2) sees discussion boards on controversial issues as a vehicle to structure student originality and debate. During the KSSG election, Banerjee built an online forum using AverPoint, a technology he developed with friends in 2004. Unlike traditional discussion boards, the election forum "allows for a democratic, collective ranking of ideas" in which "good ideas and voter preferences rise to the surface."
KSG Information Services' recent upgrade to Lyris listserv software catalyzed this electronic controversy. Testing during the slow summer season worked out most of the kinks, but not all of them. Unsuspecting students soon discovered that sometimes "Reply" on a listserv meant "Reply all" even though only one name appeared in the "To" field. Now, that glitch has been resolved in most cases, but the occasional flaw continues to anger some students and raise questions about whether the open listserv should be better managed.
Public rants that ensued on the listserv over accidental "mass" emails typically ended with a cautionary email from a KSG student urging for the mindful use of listservs. Keatra Fuller (MPP2) sent one of those perturbed emails. After hearing murmurs and gripes about the email chains in the forum, she came home to find her inbox flooded and reacted promptly.
Fuller believes that dialogue is valuable but that "logistically it doesn't make sense to have a debate with 1000 other people over email."
Taufiq Rahim (MPP1), who also sent out an admonishing response to an email chain, shares Fuller's frustration. He believes emailing the listserv is too often misused as an outlet for discussions that should be channeled into other venues.
"It makes sense to have different forums for different things. There should be topic areas or discussion boards online for those types of debates," Rahim said. "The flurry of emails sent by KSSG election candidates should have been compiled and placed in one place on the intranet."
Shouvik Banerjee (MPP2) sees discussion boards on controversial issues as a vehicle to structure student originality and debate. During the KSSG election, Banerjee built an online forum using AverPoint, a technology he developed with friends in 2004. Unlike traditional discussion boards, the election forum "allows for a democratic, collective ranking of ideas" in which "good ideas and voter preferences rise to the surface."
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