[Coral-List] Coral-List Membership and Education Drive

James Hendee jim.hendee at noaa.gov
Thu Dec 10 08:37:53 EST 2015


Greetings, Coral-Listers!

    One of our ongoing points of discussion has been how to educate the
masses to the plight of coral reefs.  Consider that the combined
knowledge of all us Coral-Listers is huge, though many of us are
reticent to post what we do and what our thoughts are.  I would like to
propose to you that a combined effort of gaining more members to our
community, added to an enhanced effort to relay to all the rest of our
community what we do, might be of value in the edification of all of us
(and new students to coral reef ecology) in those areas where we are not
so well versed.  This proposal is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand
more knowledge might be circulated, but on the other hand, it is Yet
Another Email that crams our in-boxes.  Well, you can always delete
based on what the subject line is, and maybe we could also require that
the Subject line have something like, for example, "ABSTRACT: The
Genomics of Coral Bleaching" or whatever.  So, if we have "ABSTRACT" in
the Subject line, your email client can filter it in or out, depending
upon your interest.  If we adopt this, it would be best that the
description of the subject be concise and succinct, rather than the
whole title (if it's a long one).  Yeah, I know, the literature is
huge--if we all started posting our Abstracts it might result in
information overload and nobody reads them.  (And this of course makes
more work for us Coral-List moderators!)

    Maybe this isn't such a good idea, but you've seen that in the past
that some of us post links and abstracts of new papers to the list.  To
me, those are informative and if I don't read the article, well at least
I've learned a little about the subject.  I know some people feel
posting your new paper to Coral-List is a form of self-aggrandizement,
but if you think of the idea in this other light of education and
outreach, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

    Coral-List has been more of an open forum for items of concern or
contention.  It can and should still serve that purpose, but I would ask
that you think of ways to use this list to spread the basic knowledge we
gather, too, especially to colleagues and students new to the
discipline.  Perhaps introducing Coral-List to your students would help
in their education of the many facets of research we are engaged in.

    This is just a thought over a strong cup of coffee and a point of
discussion--it's not a requirement.

    Cheers,
    Jim
        Coral-List Admin



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