13.0075 long conference messages...

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Mon, 28 Jun 1999 22:14:18 +0100 (BST)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 75.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 16:40:10 +0900
From: Peter Evans <evans@i.hosei.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: 13.0065 conferences

At 13:45 99/06/20 +0100, Humanist wrote:

a 56kB message listing conferences, complete with the exact times for lunch
breaks, the names of all the people on the organizing committees, etc.

Here's a double-barreled proposal for Humanist's long-suffering editors:

(i) Ask that any conference description should be limited to twenty lines of
text. (I think that this is far more than adequate. All that's really needed
is: title, place, date, URL, email address for people without web access. The
web page or private message can discuss languages, prices, parking facilities,
etc.)

(ii) Refuse to post or even abridge anything that's longer. I know that
Willard has in the past put a lot of effort and time into removing the flab
from these messages. I don't see why he should bother, and suggest that
conference organizers would very quickly learn to do it for themselves once
they see their more verbose messages being redirected to NUL.

I hope that my comments aren't seen as denigrating the organizers of and
participants in these conferences. I'm sure that most do an excellent job.
All that concerns me is the cumulative bulk of their . . . well, advertising.

Tersely yours
Peter Evans (Hosei University, Tokyo)
+++++++++++++++++++++
Peter Evans evans@i.hosei.ac.jp

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