3.220 citing e-documents, cont. (66)
Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Thu, 6 Jul 89 19:54:37 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 220. Thursday, 6 Jul 1989.
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 89 08:15:45 EDT
From: jonathan@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jonathan Altman)
Subject: Re: 3.198 citing e-documents, cont. (50)
There are two issues in the e-mail citation issue that I wish to
address. One has been well discussed, one mentioned only in passing
but I feel the latter is important.
1. On using the electronic mail address of the originator of an
electronic mail message. Somebody suggested using RFC 822 compliant
e-mail paths. I concur that this is what should be used. The
reason is that RFC 822 is a standard on electronic e-mail addresses.
This standard is not likely to disappear, although it may be
subsumed into a later standard. Those who write and maintain
computer systems and network software will make sure that RFC 822
addresses work, much the same as the U.S. Postal service (or anybody
else's postal service presumably) makes sure that zipcodes work, or
the phone company makes sure that area codes, exchanges, and so
forth work. We should decide instead how to simplify things. One
contributor listed two address which Humanist arrive from:
HUMANIST%UTORONTO.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
(or some such) and
HUMANIST@UTORONTO.BITNET
Out of these two addresses, we can consider the top address to be
like a street address, or routing address. It seems in most
citations we do not need the street address, nor directions on how
to get to a particular publisher's office, just the city. So, I
suggest we standardize on using the latter (domain) address whenever
possible. In the case of journals such as HUMANIST, this is easy,
because the address is constant. The latter address uses domain
format. Humanist SHOULD be reachable at that address from any
computer which can send e-mail to BITNET. Mail programs that can't
reach the latter address above are, to my knowledge, non-compliant
mailers and therefore there is a problem with THAT mail program, not
the address. This should be fixed by the computer people who
maintain that computer, NOT by our citation style. Computer
scientists have not finished standardizing yet, but e-mail sites are
gradually becoming more accessible by addresses such as the latter
above.
2. On journals such as Humanist. One thing that has been left ouf
of the discussion so far is acknowledging the editors of e-journals
such as Humanist. I watched over Willard's shoulder as he composed
an issue of Humanist while at the Dynamic Text conference. Changes
are occasionally made (such as including historical information
about a message, or apologia, or announcement). Further, to be
strict, Willard must also edit EVERY message that goes out on
Humanist to remove the e-mail headers and assign issue numbers. So,
he needs to be included as the editor of the journal, to recognize
his influence on the final journal product (and no, this is not a
plug for Willard, necessarily. This should be the case for ALL
e-journals and their editors).
Enough for now on this.
Jonathan Altman jonathan@eleazar.Dartmouth.edu
Database Consultant jonathan.altman@Dartmouth.edu
Dartmouth Dante Project