Biblical Hebrew Forum

["John M. Linebarger" <jmlineb AT comcast.net>]

I'm a B-Hebrew lurker who occasionally posts questions, and has also 
commented about the Jim Stinehart phenomenon.  However, by trade I am a 
Computer Scientist.  My dissertation work was on computational support for 
group collaboration patterns in a distributed virtual environment for product 
design.

So I'm both professionally and personally fascinated by the patterns (ruts, 
really) that the B-Hebrew mailing list has fallen into over the last several 
months (what I call the "Jim Stinehart" era).  In fact, I am considering 
using B-Hebrew as a case study in disfunctional Web-based collaboration and 
submitting the results to a conference or journal.

Here are my observations:

1.  Three patterns characterize recent B-Hebrew postings:  Bullying (Jim), 
Challenging (Karl, et al.), and Appeasing (the moderators, although George 
has adopted more of a Challenging pattern of late).
2.  The net effect of the Bullying, Challenging, and Appeasing is that those 
patterns have drowned out the Question/Response, Requests for Assistance, and 
Responsible Hypothesis Floating patterns that used to characterize the list.. 
 Statistically, they simply dominate all other traffic.
3.  Not only do these new patterns dominate all other traffic, my hypothesis 
is that it squelches and discourages other traffic because questions get lost 
in the crossfire.  I know that I have submitted questions from time to time 
recently that were never answered, simply because all attention was focused 
on Jim.

In short, it is hard not to conclude that the B-Hebrew is currently 
disfunctional with respect to its original goals.  Sad, but absolutely 
fascinating.  It will make a great case study.  Thanks!

John M. Linebarger, PhD (Computer Science)
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA