Plans nostalgia

In an essay prompted by my previous post, Lindsey Kuper aptly expresses the reason so many alumni are deeply attached to Plans:

But for me, and probably a lot of others out here beyond the “bubble” since moving away from Grinnell, Plans as it is now feels kind of like home. I have other means with which to communicate with the world at large -- means far better suited to that purpose. But there are times when I could care less about the world at large and just want to communicate with the MathLAN denizens or the Vegan Co-op kids, and Plans is the best way to do that. It's a poor substitute for being in Grinnell with those people, but it's what we've got. There are times when the quaint, limited, bug-ridden Plans UI makes me smile, remembering old times. And I'm glad there's a place where I can discuss aspects of our shared culture without having to explain myself, a place where I can indulge in inside jokes. ...

I'd like to know if Plans users in Grinnell (almost all being current students, faculty, or staff) and out of Grinnell (almost all being alums) have different goals in mind when they use Plans. If they do, and Plans remains as limited and insular as always, maybe it'll continue to gain popularity with alums while continuing to lose appeal to users in Grinnell, for the reasons I've given above. It's going to be really interesting to see what happens.

In the long term, it can't continue to gain popularity with alumni while losing popularity with current students. If current students don't use it, Plans won't feel like home to them when they graduate! The best future I can see for Plans in that case is to become the on-line community for alumni of the classes from 1999 to 2007 or so.

That would still be a useful role, but I had hoped that Plans would become (among other things) a way for current undergraduates to get a glimpse of their possible futures, a placement service, and a resource for alumni who continue to take an interest in the College to monitor events and changes here very closely and to get good inside information about them. There were some signs that Plans was beginning to take on these roles, but I don't think it will happen unless Plans continues to attract current students (and faculty members -- another reason I'm giving up on Plans is that I haven't been able to persuade very many of my faculty colleagues to take an interest in it).

Ms. Kuper also reports that LiveJournal doesn't like my feed. The explanation is that they probably aren't set up yet to parse Atom 1.0 feeds. If they don't add that feature soon, I'll set up an Atom 0.3 feed for you to use.