[Cdt-l] A controversial subject: The CDT-L is awful.

[Jack Haskel]

The CDT-L is awful. That's not a personal attack, it's not about you. The people of the CDT-L are fantastic. You are some of the highest quality people that I can imagine, and the information on this listserve can be superb.
It's the format of this information sharing that is horrid. Listserves date back to the genesis of the internet. They are outdated and inefficient. I predict that someday we will move to a more effective communication medium than this.
A notable problem is that people respond to emails/messages to the original sender only. One could respond "to all". This would effectively disseminate your comments to a broader audience, and thus be helpful to the long distance hiking community as a whole. Also, it is difficult to see the history. What is previously known? What of which is previously known has been improved upon? How does one search? Why can't we integrate photos, audio and video? Sadly, the decades old technology that we use doesn't allow for editable, fully real time history that would most effectively let the CDT grow. I believe that the revolution of the CDT-L, the revolution of communication about the trail, is the singular most important step that can be taken by trail advocates. Perhaps our activist organization, our beloved CDTA, could modernize our communication. Or perhaps we should migrate to something else. ANYTHING would be better. A web-forum, a wiki, facebook, google wave, web 2.0. For the sake of the trail, I believe that it's time to start a conversation about moving beyond email communication.
I do not attempt to suggest that we move to a simple solution quickly. I merely think that we could start a conversation about the future of CDT communication. What do we want? How do we get the buy in of our community? Who will lead the way?

       HYOH, 
               Jack Haskel 


PS: I do not know the history of this discussion because it's too difficult to obtain via the CDT-L :(
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