A Review of the Orthopod Family of Mailing Lists

At its peak, some 400 messages a month were being sent on Orthopod. After the establishment of the speciality lists, the number dropped and most of these lists have less than 50 messages a month. It is not certain that splitting the lists will achieve the object of permanently setting the level of messages at under 400. Fig 1 shows that while there was a drop in the traffic after the new lists were established it was actually an all around drop, likely associated with members discontinuing participation. Further, the traffic has now returned to the level it was in April 1998. As more orthopaedic surgeons discover the value of the mailing lists one can expect traffic to increase either steadily or exponentially.

Unfortunately, heavy traffic will also erode some of the best features of the mailing list, the sense of community, of knowing the individual people who answer and the willingness of members to listen to your problems and contribute their thoughts. It's hard to see how that could continue if even a minute fraction of the world's orthopaedic surgeons joined the list and participated regularly. Many current members resisted the idea of splitting the list at all complaining that they now had to be members of several lists if their interests were to be covered. So further splitting is unlikely to be a workable solution. The Internet has a way of evolving solutions to the problems which it itself creates.

 

Membership statistics for the lists are shown below.

Membership in the Orthopod Family of Mailing Lists

* Overlap with orthopod was calculated as the percentage of members of a speciality list who were also members of orthopod. No attempt was made to estimate overlap with other lists. (Figures in brackets are estimates which I will firm up)

 

The figures suggest there are about 250 members of the speciality lists who are not members of Orthopod (40% of 627). Rather more people than expected are only members of one of the specialty lists. It was previously thought that the typical pattern would be membership of orthopod AND one or more lists. It would be interesting to analyse who the people are who do not join the main list.

 

McLauchlan, Cadogan and Oliver (in press) have analysed the message types and origins on the Orthopod Mailing List. They conclude that the quality of communication on the mailing list was appropriate for the purposes. Each contributor sent an average of between 2 and 3 messages per month, although some contributors routinely contributed a much larger share. The majority of the threads related to cases or to general orthopaedic topics and of these 54% were supported by references and 77% had contributions from senior staff (professors, lecturers and consultants). Ndukwe, Eaton and Oliver (personal communication) have performed a similar analysis of the Hand mailing list and noted that hand surgery is an extremely visual subject and well suited to discussion in a mulitmedia format.

 

The greatest disappointment is that only a very few of the commanding figures of the orthopaedic world have discovered the mailing lists and decided to participate. Great teachers are great communicators and we believe that they would find the continuing cut and thrust very much to their taste. Another aspect they might enjoy is teaching to a group far more knowledgeable, far more experienced and far more critcal than the trainees or audiences they are used to. Regardless of the results of dry analysis, this form of continuous exposure to current orthopaedic thinking either suits your mind set or not. If you can find the time to keep up with the messages you will find yourself striding through a cyberspace corridor constantly stimulated by intriguing problems and the solutions which your colleagues around the world are offerng. Simply being exposed to it will provide an insight into what topics are contentious, where the controversies are and how the same problems are treated in different parts of the world. If you pay strict attention, follow up the references and read around the subjects that are presented there is no question that it could be a lifetime source of CME.

 

Indeed, the opportunities to mine the "Wit and Wisdom of Orthopod" layered in rich veins in the archives are extraordinarily tempting. Any teaching program with trainees wishing to undertake a project would find one in these archives. Simply editing the messages, bolstering them with references and fleshing out the rationale would result in a eclectic collection of pearls and tips which would make a memorable contribution to academic orthopaedics and to the orthopaedic Internet. Unlike the comments from the professor at rounds, and unlike the corridor consults of reality, these ideas are not sound waves fading on a transient medium, are not even scattered, but are assembled ready for someone with energy and time to polish and display them. Participation is enjoyable. The magnitude and value of the knowledge-base we create as we do so, is astonishing.

 

This review was written as part of the paper presenting the Orthogate Project to MedNet98

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