[emacs-humanities] Keeping this mailing list on-topic. (Was: Re: [OT] PDP-11 manuals)

[Karl Fogel]

On 20 Jan 2023, M. ‘quintus’ Gülker wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> please apologise the off-topic posting, I am not going to repeat 
> it. But
> since this is a humanities-centred mailing list, maybe there are 
> some
> computer historians around here who might be interested in the 
> below.
>
> I am cleaning up my personal library a little. I own four 
> original
> PDP-11 operating manuals dated 1970-1974, which were sorted out 
> by my
> university when the the IT faculty changed their rooms into a new
> building. I have no use for them, as I do (obviously) not own a 
> PDP-11
> nor even understand much of the rather technical content. I tried
> selling them over eBay, but nobody wanted them, so I am now 
> giving them
> away for free to a responsible person for no other cost than the
> shipping costs. I am located in Germany. Please write a private 
> e-mail
> to me to the address mentioned in the signature if you are 
> interested.
>
> The complete list of manuals is:
>
> - pdp11 handbook (1970)
> - pdp11 periphals and interfacing handbook (1972)
> - pdp11/05/10/35/40 processor handbook (1973)
> - pdp11 periphals handbook (1973-1974)
>
> All of them bear a copyright mark attributing the "Digital 
> Equipment
> Corporation".
>
> I will only give them away all at once.

This off-topic posting is no great harm, and I hope you find a 
good home for the PDP manuals.

But I would appreciate it if we could stick to the charter of this 
mailing list: Emacs as used in the humanities.  People subscribed 
to this list based on the premise that that's the topic.

Recently there have been posts that have literally nothing to do 
with Emacs.  The one quoted above is one; the recent "Zizek" 
thread is another example.  I was kind of surprised when people 
followed up in that thread to continue the conversation (instead 
of following up to point out that the OP was off-topic here).

If people want a mailing list for "technically-inclined and 
free-software-oriented computer users in the humanities", that 
sounds great!  There are many places to host such a list.  But 
this list has a different and narrower topic.  Quoting from the 
list page [1]:

 > This list is for general discussions on using Emacs in the
 > Humanities (a.k.a. "Liberal Arts") and related domains.  The 
 > focus
 > is on using Emacs, not programming it, and the participants do 
 > not
 > need, and are not assumed, to have programming knowledge.

Sure, people *could* filter out mails whose Subject lines have 
"[OT]".  But we shouldn't have to.  The list itself is already 
that filter.

Best regards,
-Karl

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-humanities