I believe Etienne Wenger, the guru of online communities of practice <http://www.ewenger.com/> calls lurking "legitimate peripheral participation."

Thank goodness we are legit!

I've really enjoyed the chatting and online interaction and wish I could participate longer, but other projects are calling. Hope to see some of you at the Electronic Village Online next Jan-Feb. I'll be sure that Jackie passes on the invitation to you.

Cheers--
--Elizabeth Hanson-Smith
http://www.geocities.com/ehansonsmi


At 09:36 AM 5/22/2007, you wrote:

>Hello all

>I've spent intermittent considerable time trying to coin a new

>expression/term for lurkers --

>how about an acronym -- UPO  (Unseen Participants, Overwhelmed?)

>

>UPOs  makes me smile

>

>lurker  does not

>

>thoughts? other ideas?  [Leecy's "perched" made me smile, too -- but

>somehow poised/perched connotes non-involvement (not "flying" away 

with

>the insights gleaned) -- and as others have indicated, unseen does not

>necessarily mean not participating...]

>

>and I'll likely be UPO for the remainder of this week!

>Holly



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/professionaldevelopment/attachments/20070522/9a80c8b3/attachment.html