The Curmudgeonly Trainer

So, what’s up on the the training and development discussion list? First a summary. There were 224 messages posted in April, which is an all time low for the month of April. I was banned, although apparently it’s a secret as much is on the list.

This sparked some discussion about “list vitality”, which probably accounted for a good number of the posts in the latter part of the month, with Bev Ferrell (moderator, or perhaps list owner, it’s a secret) writing a good number of the posts.

Some argued that the moderators themselves are responsible for the decline in quantity and quality (which is probably part of the story, but not all of it, since the list (in its present incarnation) has NEVER had open archives, and the material cannot be indexed or found in search engines. That’s a policy that has been consistent, and one that Bev has championed on trdev, but on another list she has been involved in.

Apparently some folks can’t make the connection between lack of vitality and participation, and keeping everything hidden from potentially new, eager contributors.

As an example, Bev Farrell said (is it petulance?)

” There are multiple members here who COULD put a link on their website, but few do. Why? Eric used to have one, but his site closed down a long time ago. We had lots of members join us from there.”

it’s not rocket science — the answer. I have a link or two on my sites to trdev, but the reason I don’t promote it is because IT REQUIRES REGISTRATION, and a whole rigmarole to even read messages. I can’t recommend such a thing to my visitors. You can’t even see if the list is for you without registering. Not happening.

Further, Bev Ferrell goes on to try to justify keeping everything secret, and the content is what you might expect — silly and wrong. There is NO protection from spam, or anything else by hiding things, or doing things in secret. Here’s a snip:

There are some lawsuits pending now against lists and forum and owners for allowing people to criticize some companies and products in an open and uncontested fashion. Yahoo will not protect owners in any
way. Opening the list messages would expose everything everyone has said to the whole world.

An interesting point. It’s true that companies that have been libeled or slandered on trdev (if there are any and I doubt that’s the case from 8 years of observing) would have more trouble finding out they’d been slandered if everything is hidden. So, I guess the notion is that “we” might have such slandering going on in the list, but what the heck, nobody can find it anyway!? So, it’s ok for companies NOT to be able to find the slander?

Perhaps the high point of the vitality discussion was when one Dr. Richard Atkins wrote:

I wonder what would happen to their businesses if they [trainers] slowed down (not stopped) posting and did the work they’re getting paid to do!

which sparked a small argument where the word snarky was included! Entertaining. Still not really about training.

Anyway more on these things in another section. What about training discussions? There WERE some.

Here’s a few of the topic threads:

What makes for a good Instructor Guide?

New List Coordinators

Excel versus Access

Data that supports use of “fun” training methods

powerpoint to flash conversions

and a discussion of a poll that was mostly ignored much to the disgust apparently of the owner/moderators.

…and some other odds and sods.

The conversations that garner attention and involvement seem to be the simplest, or the ones least related to training and development. Ah well. On to see what May brings.