Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 16:59:58 -0400
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: long conference messages
Dear Colleagues:
My thanks to the recent messages with support for tackling the
long-conference-message problem. Perhaps as editor I am "long-suffering",
though I don't really carry any such burden. I occasionally get more than a
little annoyed at such messages, especially when they come from people who
should know better, i.e. from those who know more about computing than I
do, and esp. when their experise includes language. I ask a naive question:
how can they know so little about communicating with other human beings?
I have indeed contemplated taking a hard line, which is to say, summarily
deleting all such messages in the hope that eventually the submitters will
get the message. What troubles me, however, is that meanwhile -- and it
could be a long while -- members of this seminar would be denied the
information, some of which, despite the inepitude of those who have it to
give, is of considerable interest. So my own preference is to hack each of
these messages down to size manually and pass them on. There is some
satisfaction in the hacking, though I do have to sharpen my machete quite
often....
Against such annoyance as I have just admitted to, I recommend a period
spent as conference organiser, particularly in that crucial time before
registrations pass the break-even point.
Yours,
WM
-----
Dr W.L. McCarty / Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London / Strand / London WC2R 2LS U.K.
+44 (0)171 848 2784 / http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
maui gratia
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