I began noticing that the number of posts to Hockey-L have been going down
last year.  My original thought, which still may be a contributing factor,
is that the splitting of Hockey-L and Info-Hoc has caused more people to only
be sinks and not sources of information.  That is, if one once subscribes to
Info-Hoc, one does not add one's opinions and additional
comments/descriptions.  It is a bit harder to give a second opinion when it
goes to a different place.
 
My second thought, as others have also stated, was that US College
Hockey On-Line has taken away some of H-L's "business".  While this is
partially the case, it seemed to me that the chat area on USCHO is not
all that busy and contains much more noise than Hockey-L.  I do think
that what USCHO has done is cause the people who leave Hockey-L (mainly
those who graduate) not to be replaced by new students.
 
Also, the uniformly high quality of the writing on USCHO may be causing
those who can't write as well not to have the nerve to contribute.  I for
one, have enjoyed reading game reports and opinions, regardless of the
quality of the writing.  (However, running things through a spell checker
can't hurt.)
 
If the RPI list is any indication, Hockey-L has little to fear from
single school lists. This weekend the list was filled with 50 bounced
messages.
 
I also noticed that John Haeussler decided to leave Hockey-L when his
school was at the top.  Not many can say that.
 
On a more positive note, we seem not to be getting all the Band posts
that we received in previous years. :-)
 
By the way, do we still have the Hockey list for meta-messages about
Hockey-L?  This thread probably really should be there.
 
Ralph Baer
RPI '68, '70, '74
 
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