Re: [emacs-humanities] Keeping this mailing list on-topic.

[Karl Fogel]

On 21 Jan 2023, Edgar Vincent wrote:
> Hello Bastien, hello everyone,
>
> While I understand that off-topic subjects may be annoying to 
> subscribers,
> I tend to agree with Bastien, especially given the fact that the 
> traffic on the list
> is very low.
>
> This is the reason why I answered the email about Zizek: I am 
> interested not only
> in using Emacs in the context of the humanities, but also in 
> other people using it said context.
> I assume that most people using Emacs are IT professionals, and 
> few of us
> have a background in the humanities or the social sciences. This 
> list can thus serve as
> as gathering point for this small minority of users.
>
> Perhaps there could be another list called 
> “emacs-humanities-offtopic”? I don’t know
> what the general policy is.
>
> Wishing you all a nice weekend,

I think that's a fine solution.

If most people here agree, would someone who has the power to 
change the list topic on 
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-humanities please 
edit it?  Maybe something like this:

 This list is a gathering place for people using Emacs in the
 Humanities (a.k.a. "Liberal Arts") and related domains.  Usage 
 of
 Emacs in the Humanities is the thing subscribers have in common, 
 but a
 given conversation on the list may or may not involve Emacs 
 itself.

(Feel free to redraft, of course; I'm just offering a suggestion.)

Subscribers like me can decide whether or not we want to 
unsubscribe from the list, now that its purpose has changed.  It's 
fine for a mailing list to evolve.  Such evolution usually 
involves some negotiation, and my post was a contribution to that 
negotiation.  The negotiation does not have to reach my preferred 
result in order to conclude successfully.

Best regards,
-Karl

> Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > Hi Karl,
> >
> > Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> writes:
> >
> > > But I would appreciate it if we could stick to the charter of 
> > > this
> > > mailing list: Emacs as used in the humanities.
> >
> > I understand your concern, but instead of trying to move 
> > off-topic
> > discussions elsewhere, I would suggest to let the topic of this 
> > list
> > evolve as “Emacs users and humanities”.
> >
> > This includes the topic “Emacs as used in the humanities” but 
> > is way
> > larger, letting Emacs users discuss humanities among 
> > themselves.
> >
> > I suspect this larger topic better reflects why people 
> > subscribe to
> > this list, as the recent discussions suggests.
> >
> > WDYT?