Announcing: New Slavic list to discuss politics and current events

[Eliot Borenstein]

Dear list,

Given the repeated debates over what should and not be posted to
SEELANGS, it's clear that the list accomodates a large and diverse
community whose ideas of the list's purpose at times diverge.  While
I personally feel that SEELANGS is a cybernetic function rather than
a "community" in itself, and have absolutely no desire to learn the
political views of colleagues I have never met, others obviously feel
differently.  And it is a shame that those who do feel differently
often think they have to unsubscribe, accusing Alex Rudd (who does us
all a service by maintaining SEELANGS) of "censorship" when he is
merely trying to keep the list on-topic.

So I have set up slavpol, a new listserv open to anyone interested in
Slavic and Central/East European cultures, history, politics, and
languages who might want to discuss political questions and current
events.  When I came up with the idea several weeks ago, I thought of
devoting it to the World Trade Center attack, but, given the way
things tend to happen, one disaster seems to follow another.  So the
list is more open-ended.

The idea is that SEELANGS would remain a service primarily for making
announcements and queries (and, of course, anything else a subscriber
to an unmoderated list might want to do), while slavpol would be the
more natural forum for open-ended, free-wheeling discussions.

Slavpol is not a moderated list.  In fact, I have no intention of
reading the postings on a daily basis, or else I would probably have
to control my blood pressure with medication.  However, if I am
alerted to violations of certain basic conditions of Internet and
interpersonal civility (overt bigotry and slurs, ad hominem attacks,
totally unrelated spamming, commercial advertising), I reserve the
right to remove the offending party from the list.

To subscribe to slavpol, send a blank message to: join-slavpol at forums.nyu.edu
Or go to the web interface at  http://forums.nyu.edu and enter slavpol.

One final note:  to those SEELANGS subscribers like myself, who
prefer to lurk on the list, waiting for the occasional and rare
tidbit that matches your personal interest, I highly recommend
switching your subscription settings to the DIGEST mode.  That way,
you get one long SEELANGS message every day, which begins with a list
of topics covered in the messages.  If you're not a very active
participant, this makes SEELANGS more useful and less frustrating.

Eliot Borenstein, Chair
Russian & Slavic Studies
New York University

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