Divided We Fall

Disease
Presently, I am running a new series of quizzes on Quiznet . But somehow, I don't seem to be getting the same number of replies (only 10-20) as I used to get (between 30-40) when I ran the original series in 2002-2003. I started to wonder: Have I lost my sting? Should I stop? But a few other old-timers were also complaining that they too were not getting many responses either. I decided to take a look around.

The cause?
I found that a major change from back then was that there were many more quizzing groups around, as was the recent spurt in the number of blogs. Taking into account the similarity in the nature of the quizzes in my two series, perhaps the lackadaisical response had something to do with the fact that I don't crosspost these quizzes, ie, post the same content in different groups.

A cursory examination of the quizzes receiving 30+ replies backed my hypothesis; those were being crossposted.

I believe there too many quiz groups right now. It is getting a bit difficult to keep track of and manage the content in our Inboxes, with the same content appearing on most of the quiz-groups. It also takes more effort to share the information/make announcements; we need to mark copies to all the quiz-groups.

Evils of the crosspost
I understand that the exponential explosion in the number of groups could be because each group has a philosophy of its own. Or does it? If yes, why does the same content appear in most of them? I feel that many are just egotistical pursuits. The duplication of content leads to -
a) Time wastage (Haven't I read this before?)
b) Unnecessary mail-traffic (read as spam; duplicates are as useless as spam)
This is why I don't crosspost.

The group-proliferation is not for the Greater Common Good; indeed, it did much harm. Take a look at the contrast between :-
(pre-blog/multigroup era)
2003 Quiznet Posts : J104 F123 M127 A130 M154 J113 J117 A114 S127 O117 N99 D72
(post-group explosion)
2005 Quiznet Posts : J64 F66 M69 A31 M55 J66 J52 A45 S70 O81 N80 D101

I am reminded of the days when the chess-world was split into the PCA & the FIDE camps. Lots of duplicated and wasted effort and confusion.
Too many cooks spoil the broth: too many groups spoil the fun:: 1:1. What do you think?
....Maybe a grand unified quiz group is the need of the hour?

History shows us the way to go.