All: Fund-Drive 2014 - Last Call

Linguist linguist at linguistlist.org
Mon Apr 28 17:16:25 UTC 2014


Dear colleagues,

 

most of you have probably noticed that LINGUIST List is running a fund-drive for two months now.

 

Please allow me to explain why we need your help and support, and why this fund-drive is extremely important for the continuation of the free LINGUIST List services.

 

The LINGUIST List was offering its services without fund-drive and significant support from its readers and supporters since spring 2012. In the meantime we have posted hundreds of calls and conference announcements, provided Easy Abs to numerous conference organizers to help with abstract submissions and reviews, free job ads for PhD-positions, internship and summer-school announcements, and many more issues with important information for the linguistic community world-wide.

 

The difference between LINGUIST and other mailing lists is not only that it is moderated. It also is available to you, you can talk to all of us, contact us, ask us for help and advice. This is what we do on a daily basis. We are available for corrections and changes of announcements, all kinds of editing and modifying requests, as well as for general suggestions, reaching out to the world, improving its services based on your suggestions and needs. Our editors answer numerous requests, questions and suggestions daily. Our programmer improves functionalities mostly within a day, and we all take your suggestions and discuss them in regular meetings, trying to find the best way to improve the website, the mailing list, and all kinds of other services. Many of us do this as a free service to the community. We have only one paid programmer designated to work for LINGUIST List needs. Most of our students cannot afford to offer their free time without remuneration. They need to be paid to cover their bills and living costs. For some, the job opportunity at the University is the only legal opportunity to earn some income to support their living while studying linguistics. We pay our editors. We also tend to go beyond the State-specific minimum hourly rates and pay our student editors fair rates. We cannot pay them really fair rates, as much as we would like to, but we are significantly above of the minimum hourly rates of Michigan right now. They do a great job, and their work, the experience in the field, the contact to linguists and future colleagues, and the payment that they get contributes significantly to their linguistic studies and future career.

 

I have heard many times that The LINGUIST List receives support from so many sides, from the NSF for example, or that it makes so much money with the paid services (common job ads) and publisher support, that it does not or should not need the community, that it can survive without the fund-drive. Currently, unfortunately it cannot. We use all the income from paid job ads (note that many job ads are free at LINGUIST) to cover the salary of our programmer. This is a person who is maintaining the services, the servers, the software, all web pages, the database, and many other things that make LINGUIST possible. We can pay student editors during the summer and during the semesters only, if we receive enough donations and other financial support to cover the costs.

 

LINGUIST is now at a critical point. We have been working hard to develop new technologies and websites to provide a better service to the community. Draft layouts and implementations can be seen here:

http://new.linguistlist.org/

 

These pages have been localized and translated to Chinese, Spanish, Polish, German etc. They will offer a truly linguistic experience to the global linguistic community. We have been working on mobile apps and tools for tablets and smartphones to improve the user experience even more.

 

And, LINGUIST List is not only changing its face to the world, not only offering new and enhanced services, bringing all linguists worldwide together, it is also about to change its physical location and host institution. We will need all help we can get to restart all these services at a new location. We will need new technologies, equipment, and in particular student helpers to support the relocation and building up a new LINGUIST List.

 

Thus, allow me to ask you again, please do support our student editors and donate to the LINGUIST List now. Your donation is used to pay the next generation of linguists, your future colleagues, PhD-students and friends to finish their degree in linguistics, and at the same time offer a service to their future professional area and discipline.

 

Please use the following URL to donate via credit card or PayPal transaction to the LINGUIST List fund-drive.

https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

 

Thank you all for your support!

 

Sincerely

Damir Cavar damir at linguistlist.org <mailto:damir at linguistlist.org> 

(Moderator of The LINGUIST List)

 

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