Is anyone there?

[Nick Gardner]

Am I right in supposing that there has been no contribution from any other economics author in the last two months? (three?, six?).  If so, what can I do  about it?  I have very  few contacts in that field now, but others may be able to nominate  some potential  recruits for me to contact.

[Hayford Peirce]

Hi, Nick,

Could you go to your Profile on your Forum page and scroll down to the bottom and put in your User page info so that your link appears at the bottom of your messages to the Forum, the way that mine (apparently) and those of other contributors do?

Thanks!

[Larry Sanger]

Call for participation on some economics mailing lists.  This is an effective and underused method of getting the word out to people who are already much engaged online.

[Nick Gardner]

Call for participation on some economics mailing lists.  This is an effective and underused method of getting the word out to people who are already much engaged online.

Thanks. Have done as you say

[Larry Sanger]

Great!  Could you add the name of the group here? -- http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Recruitment#Mailing_list_posts

[Nick Gardner]

I have asked for suggestions (for economists that I could approach with a view to persuading them to become CZ authors)  in a message to all on  the economics mailing lists and by email to most of the economics editors. There has been no response.

Has anyone else any suggestions?

[Larry Sanger]

What economics mailing lists did you mail?  I'd have to see your mail to give you feedback.

It's possible that, with only small mailing lists and a poorly-constructed mail, you would have gotten no response from anyone.  But if the mailing lists are sizable and the mail is well-constructed, you're virtually guaranteed some response.

I'm looking through the ten most recently created accounts (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special%3ALog&type=newusers), and I'm afraid I can't see any new economics authors...

Anyway, supply me with more info (here or by e-mail) and I can advise you further.

[Nick Gardner]

What economics mailing lists did you mail?  I'd have to see your mail to give you feedback.

It's possible that, with only small mailing lists and a poorly-constructed mail, you would have gotten no response from anyone.  But if the mailing lists are sizable and the mail is well-constructed, you're virtually guaranteed some response.

I'm looking through the ten most recently created accounts (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special%3ALog&type=newusers), and I'm afraid I can't see any new economics authors...

Anyway, supply me with more info (here or by e-mail) and I can advise you further.

There are 12 people on the economics mailing list (http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/roster/cz-economics)

I mailed them as follows:

I should like to make an attempt to recruit new economics authors but,
being  long retired, I  now have very few contacts in the profession, so I
should welcome some suggested targets.

Nick Gardner

[Larry Sanger]

Aha, that explains it.  You only e-mailed cz-economics, and you were asking them for advice on who to target and how to target them.  It's not surprising that not one out of 12 replied to that.

More effective would be just to pick some big economics lists and ask people to join CZ!  Going after specific targets is almost always going to result in a poor success rate; people who join us will be early adopter types, and as such, very rarely occurring in any group.

[Nick Gardner]

I can see that I could compile  a list by searching the staff lists of economics faculties, but I was hoping that someone on the cz economics mailing list, or someone among the cz economics editors, would get me such a list ready-made  - or tell me where to look. Can anyone else?

[Larry Sanger]

When I say, "More effective would be just to pick some big economics lists and ask people to join CZ," by "lists," I mean listservs, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups (Usenet), and the like.  Searching the staff lists of economics faculties will take too long.  Trust me, I've done this many, many times before.  The efficient way to get economics faculty involved is to ask for faculty from among big economics groups (of the sort I just described), not to ask for Internet-active people from among faculty lists.

[Larry Sanger]

See, for example, http://groups.yahoo.com/search?query=Economics

[Nick Gardner]

I see what you mean. The Google group seems useful, but I am not sure that I want my email address to be available to everyone. Is there  no alternative?

[Hayford Peirce]

Open a new email address at, say Google Mail (gMail) and use it only for this group of people....

[Larry Sanger]

Hi again Nick, if you're talking about the link I gave you, it's not just one Yahoo group (and not a Google group); if you look at that page, you'll see that there are 7,154 different groups.  Each item on that page isn't a post, it is a whole list with thousands of members.  Probably, as you go through the whole long list, you'll find that most of the groups are small and defunct, but there are definitely HUNDREDS of active groups that list economics in their description.  Of these, dozens have thousands of members and are ripe for CZ recruitment!