As many of you may know, recently, Jan Seibert issued an appeal to young hydrological researchers, advising caution when accepting invitations to become editors for review issues. In the past, these invitations were broadly distributed, but the results were often disappointing, leading to wasted time and effort. Demetris Koutsoyiannis, among others, raised opposing viewpoints, shifting the focus to the broader issues within scientific publishing and the influence large publishers can exert on the development of science.
This appeal was somewhat unusual for the AboutHydrology mailing list, which typically serves as an announcement platform, not a forum for discussion. Nevertheless, the topic quickly gained traction (considering the size of the community), with several prominent scientists contributing to the conversation. I eventually had to close the discussion within a day to prevent it from becoming overly repetitive. Despite its brevity, the conversation provided a good overview of the relevant perspectives.
### Key Takeaways:
1. Moderating a discussion list is surprisingly overwhelming.
2. A mailing list isn't the ideal platform for synthesizing differing opinions, but it can at least offer a quick overview of diverse perspectives on a given topic.
3. After a certain point, even well-informed and motivated contributions stop adding significant value.
4. Finding a suitable platform for discussion is essential.
5. A mailing list, despite its origins in fostering debate (like the old listserv model), is not the right tool for this anymore. Today, there are better alternatives.
Moderating such discussions is demanding, and moderators may not always have a vested interest in the topic. My proposed solution is a more distributed approach, where people can raise a question in a specialized application and share a link for feedback, allowing engagement without requiring users to join the application itself. The person who raises the question would be responsible for moderating that particular thread.
The ideal platform for AboutHydrology would be a tool designed for question pooling—something like an evolved version of *Klicker*, developed by the University of Zurich, where Jan works. *Klicker* allows questions to be posed and moderated, and users can respond via a shared link. This setup would allow the questioner to create a poll, share it on AboutHydrology, and gather feedback. At the end of the process, a report summarizing the responses could be distributed via the mailing list. While I have used the older version of *Klicker* with my students, I’m not yet proficient with the latest version.
Currently, one limitation of *Klicker* is that it doesn't seem to support direct interaction between users. However, here’s an example link to illustrate how it could work: [Jan’s opinion](https://pwa.klicker.uzh.ch/session/daf1a9ec-f26e-4ff4-ba79-30a8dd7b8cb6).
If anyone on the list knows of an alternative platform that might better suit this purpose, I’d appreciate recommendations and introductions to such tools.
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