14.0471 reality-check

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: 11/05/00

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 471.
           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: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 14:40:46 +0000
             From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
             Subject: omphaloskepic editorial query
    
    Dear Colleagues:
    
    Occasionally I find it useful to ask how we're doing -- a reality-check, if
    you will, in the gorgonian face of earning a living, which keeps too many
    of our more experienced heads from contributing to Humanist. I can have
    whatever reader-response theory I like and my own opinions, but Humanist is
    for the community of computing humanists, not for its editor. I would be
    especially glad to have responses that deconstruct the complaint of
    infoglut, if indeed that is a complaint; I've often found that "too much!"
    really means "too much of X" altogether or points to an organisational
    problem of some kind. The other day a local colleague commented to me that
    whenever he saw a message from individual Y he pushed the delete key
    immediately and seemed willing enough to continue that practice. Others,
    however, I know to be annoyed that messages are coming from certain people
    or on certain topics. As editor I have no compunction about withholding
    messages that stray too far from humanities computing or attack some person
    or other, but I won't delete ad hominem nor will I withhold a message that
    nominally is on topic but is just silly.
    
    My sense (for what it's worth) is that Humanist still has abundant reason
    for being. Are there improvements that could be made *without involving any
    significantly greater long-term effort from me*?
    
    Yours,
    W
    
    -----
    Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
    Centre for Computing in the Humanities / King's College London /
    Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
    +44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
    



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