zeldman examines the inevitability of the natural life cycle of mailing lists on dreamless:
“Everyone loves online communities, until they start hating them. Communities always evolve and change, and as they do, the earliest members begin complaining.
A few months back, half the comments at metafilter.com seemed to be about how metafilter had changed.
Before Dreamless was two weeks old, one or two people were worrying that it might go downhill.
Yesterday Astoundingweb.org got its first (well written and intelligent) complaint that the community was no longer fulfilling its mission.
Online communities are always changing. That is their nature. Is this change always negative? Or is it something we should expect and learn to appreciate?”