Hi Daryl,

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Daryl Wilkinson
<darwil@...>wrote:

Hello Donald and Mike (if you are still around) and of course all 3690
> members of this group.


Yes, I'm still around ... there just have been no post of interest to reply
to.

Steven Schnider's last post prompted me to post my thoughts about this
> group. Steven in that post thanked ALL who replied to his questions.
> Now unless he is being sarcastic, I was only aware of one reply that
> was posted to the group.


Two things may have happened there:

1) People may have hit "reply" rather than "reply all" (as you indicate
later} and so the replies did not go to the group.

2) People may have replied with something along the lines of: "Go to my
website where I sell courses" ... which is an unapproved advertisement and
so is deleted. (And before anyone says that is useful information to the
person who has a question ... we have a fairly extensive "links" section
where those interested in advertising have placed ads. And then there are
many search engines which people should be expected to use if they are
really interested in getting information.


> Hypnosis to get pregnant is an interest of mine, and I was very
> interested in hearing from anyone sharing information about the
> subject. Steven obviously had a number of useful replies that I never
> got to see. This group has been downgraded to a sort of help desk
> where answers to questions are only sent back to the person who asked
> it, if you are lucky enough to have one of the 3000 odd members
> interested enough to reply.


Trust me on this one ... of the 3000 odd members, only a few even bother
reading and of that small group, only a few would respond. We seem to have
devolved into a society of "watchers". I set up a hypnosis list some years
ago (about the time I became a moderator here) and, largely as an
experiment, I decided to respond only to questions. Since that date, I have
not posted once, that I can remember. And since I don't post, no one else
does either. People find the list, join it with grand protestations of
interest in hypnosis, post nothing, then leave because no one is talking!
Really, it should be the subject of a PhD thesis in sociology. It would be
pretty funny if it were not so sad.


> I remember a few years ago when this group was an exciting active
> forum for discussion, learning and sharing all things hypnotic. It was
> an invaluable resource for hypnotists/hypnotherapists with the largest
> membership of any group on the subject and it still may have, now
> despite it's membership it has withered into oblivion.


Oh, trust me, we could get this group boiling if we wanted to. Just post
something controversial about hypnosis or NLP and I'll criticize your point
of view and the hand full of real posters would jump in and for a week we'd
have a real brouhaha. Then I would stop posting and the whole thing would
go silent again. Don can stimulate it the same way when he finds time to
jump in ... but there is not often much to jump in about. When he has time
he posts clips from research and that sometimes raises a flap ... but again,
if he is busy, no one else will post anything of real pith.


> At one point a few years ago the settings were changed ( for what
> reason I have no idea) and replies were not posted to the group. So
> unless you know how to get around this (by posting a new message to
> the group) your reply will not be shared with the group.


But, to be fair, it is a trivial thing. If the problem of figuring out
"reply" vs "reply all" (mostly noticing what gets put into the "to" and "cc"
fields of your email) is enough to confuse a poster, do you REALLY think
they have much to offer about something genuinely tricky like hypnosis or
NLP?


> Now Donald, while I guess this group forms a good mailing list for
> your school and practice, it has ceased to have any real use for the
> rest of us. So Donald, please consider changing the settings of this
> group back to their old settings so we may openly share information in
> the true spirit of the web. If not, I thank you for starting and
> maintaining such an important resource in those early years, wish you
> well in all your endeavors, and I will move on to Hypnothoughts.com
> and other groups.


I'm not sure why your are not there already? I mean, I get mail from dozens
of groups ... personally I don't have any kind of "budget" for groups. One
does not take away from another.

And that brings up something that really bugs me ... CROSS POSTING. Some
have made these groups into a personal newsletter to generate business.
That really pisses me off. One person (who you may know if you are
subscribed to more than one of the literally dozens of hypnosis groups she
cross posts to) regularly pings me with multiple copies of stuff she clips
from yet other places ... just so she can have a "presence" in all of these
groups and (I suppose) be the name that comes to mind when someone thinks
about "the hypnosis expert". Really annoying and I delete all posts which
are cross posted to do my small part to stop getting 12 copies of the same
post. These people also bug me because if you care to "reply all" to them
you end up replying to groups you don't belong to and then get a slew of
error messages from those groups. I'm seriously thinking of banning this
poster.


Thanks for posting, Daryl. At least this post was interesting enough to get
me to respond to it.

If anyone has any IDEAS they would like to discuss, I'm sure they will
generate interest. I know they will get it from me.


--
Cheers,
Mike


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