the Indo-European mailing list

[Rich Alderson]

Dear Readers,

I find myself in a difficult position.  I have received complaints about
the running of this list which have led me to postpone sending out any
messages for a week; the input queue now contains more than 100 messages.
Before I resume sending to the list, I have some things to say.

This is the Indo-European mailing list.  The assumption is that those who
post here are at least familiar with the basics of historical linguistics,
even if they are not Indo-Europeanists themselves, and rightly so, in my
opinion.

The topics of discussion on this list have always been broader than *just*
Indo-European studies narrowly construed, because every Indo-Europeanist of
my acquaintance in the last 30 years has had broader interests than just IE
linguistics, and has welcomed input from other linguists and from other
disciplines.

For several weeks, there has been a large number of posts to the list on
several topics related to the issue of how we, whether as Indo-Europeanists
or more generally as historical linguists, deal with the imperfections of
our data, in the interpretation or in the selection thereof.  Discussions
frequently have turned on misunderstandings between pairs of writers,
whether based on differences of theoretical background or on the level of
background knowledge that is assumed here, and have in turn engendered
meta-discussions on and off the list about how these discussions have been
conducted.

The on-list meta-discussions stop now.  I have frequently returned posts to
the author for removal of commentary addressed to personality rather than
to topics under discussion; I will now make it my policy *always* to do so.
If you as a reader do not like the way a writer has expressed a point of
view, take it up with the writer in private.

I will turn off the incoming queue address tonight, before this message
goes out, and begin emptying the queue, which will take approximately 72
hours.  I would appreciate your holding responses until all messages on a
particular subject have gone out; to facilitate this, I will send out every
message now in the queue with the same Subject: header at the same time,
in order as received.

								Rich Alderson
								Indo-European
								list owner and
								moderator