SEELANGS Administrivia - Purpose Clarification

[Alex Rudd]

Dear SEELANGS Members,

This won't be an extremely long post, because there's really
only so much I want to say on this subject.

You've all presumably been following the last few posts, so I
will eschew the contextual explanation and dive right into
individual responses.

Michael Flier wrote:
>It would be useful if Alex himself would clarify his views on this issue.

I'd be pleased to do that.

Andrzej Niekrasz wrote:
>I would like to defend Mr. Oushakine's right to post his "personal
>views" (or Chomsky's, for that matter), and invite a general discussion.  As
>a unique forum for open and often spontaneous discussion among the Slavist
>community, this listserv should welcome any serious discussion on pressing
>issues, political or otherwise.

Your first misconception is that Mr. Oushakine or you or anyone else
has a right to post anything to SEELANGS.  When it comes right down
to it, SEELANGS is just a LISTSERV discussion list.  Like all such
discussion lists, there are resources put into running it and you pay
for none of them.  The service is provided to you gratis through the
generosity of the computer center of the City University of New York
because CUNY provides the hardware and software.  I provide the human
administration and support and have done so since 1993.  Those of you
who were subscribed back then might remember a posting from a CUNY
computer center administrator advising us that SEELANGS (at the time)
was without a list owner and would be taken out of existence if one
was not found.  I volunteered to take over then and I've been volunteering
ever since.  I am not a Slavicist and I don't belong to AATSEEL, so you
will never see me, and have never seen me, post here pretending to be
one or to have any expertise I do not.  I am, however, the list owner
here.  Among my duties is to set the guidelines and to see to the
orderly administration of the list.  If you have a problem with that,
please feel free to find a list server and start your own list.

Subhash Jaireth wrote:
>I whole heartedly support Andrzei. The 'Slavic World' and its bulletin board
>is not isolated from whatever is happening in the world.

Members of the "Slavic World" are also members of the world community
in general and, as such, are as affected by what happened Tuesday
as anyone else.  SEELANGS, however, certainly can be "isolated" from
discussion of the tragedy.  In fact, given the saturation level of
information and images we've reached since Tuesday morning, the better
argument is that SEELANGS *should* be "isolated" from it all, as we
all need to seek some sense of normalcy in our lives, and for many
people, this is the kind of grounding they need.

Bill Martin wrote:
>i agree with andrzej's defense of mr. oushakine's posting of chomsky's and
>fisk's statements. as scholars, we are, after all, committed to redressing
>failures of intelligence. thinking critically about yesterday's events and
>what led to them should in no way diminish anyone's feelings of outrage and
>of solidarity with the victims and with the united states and its people.

I agree with the sentiment that it is useful to think critically and
to examine how this nightmare could have happened.  I disagree with
you if you're telling us that SEELANGS is the place to do that.  It
is certainly not.  SEELANGS exists to facilitate discussion of Russian
and other Slavic and East European languages and literatures and for
no other reason.  If list members stray from that purpose now and again
it's never further than to post a job announcement or an apartment for
rent, but it's always got something to do, even tangentially, with why
the average list member is subscribed.  No one joined this list to
pick apart essays written about a terrorist attack on the United States.

If you'd like to use your on-line time to discuss what happened, there
are numerous other places on the net where you can do that and finding
them is not difficult.

Helena Goscilo wrote:
>Doesn't it make sense to express outrage when something genuinely
>outrageous occurs (yesterday's nightmare, for instance) rather than in
>response to one of Sergei's non-partisan postings, the intent of which, I
>surmise, is to generate discussion

Doesn't it make sense that any outrage expressed at a cowardly attack
upon the United States be expressed somewhere other than on an e-mail
discussion list populated by people who are here to discuss topics
related to Slavic languages and literatures?  Generating discussion
is always laudable, but imposing a place restriction is reasonable.

Subhash Jaireth again wrote:
>This is a censorship of the worst kind.
>
>Now we have lost one of the most valuable contributors to the list.

Censorship by whom?

Serguei Oushakine is no longer subscribed to SEELANGS because he
chose to unsubscribe.  That was a choice he made. No one made it
for him.

Mr. Oushakine has not been censored and is not banned from the list.
He may resubscribe if he wishes.

Michael Flier asked for clarification and there it is.  The bottom
line is this:  SEELANGS is not the place for general discussion of
the horror that took place on Tuesday nor of any published opinions
about it.

Having said that, please note that we have guidelines here on
SEELANGS, we do not have policies.  The choice of language was
purposeful.  To a person, I'm certain, the SEELANGS membership
is comprised of thoughtful, intelligent, mature adults who can
express themselves in appropriate manners and who can master any
e-mail software program if they choose to do that.  Accordingly,
in the past, I've had only to ask for something here and you've
all complied.  I love that.

I administer two other lists for which I do not have guidelines
and do have policies governing their use.  For example, whereas
here my admonition not to quote entire original messages in the
body of replies on the list is embodied in a guideline with no
attendant consequences, on my other lists it is policy.  If
someone replies to a message on the list and includes the entire
original message to which he is replying and that original message
is comprised of more than just a few lines of text, then the
offending subscriber is set to NOPOST, rendering him unauthorized
to post to the list until I take the time to point out his error.

I don't do that here because I don't think I have to.  You could
all choose to comply with our guidelines if you wanted to do that.

I note sadly that of all the list members I quoted above, only
Bill Martin did not violate our guideline on quoting entire
messages in replies.

Would it help the cause of the conservation of our scarce computer
resources if I began now to moderate SEELANGS and to screen each
message submitted for posting before allowing it to be distributed
to all the list members?  Undoubtedly.  But I'm not going to do
that.  There is balancing here.  On the one hand, there is a need
to conserve our resources.  On the other, I don't have the time to
moderate this list.  Moreover, complying with the simple guidelines
we have in place here is *not* difficult.  You could do it if you
tried.

My point?  Before you whine about censorship on this list, look
in the mirror and ask how you feel about abusing the resources
here, resources for which you pay absolutely nothing.

Hmmm... I said this wasn't going to be an extremely long post.
I guess I had more to say than I first thought.

Please send any questions, comments, concerns, etc. *off* list
and return your attention here to the topics for which SEELANGS
exists.

If you need your own copy of our Welcome message, which contains
all the list guidelines, you can send the command:

GET WELCOME SEELANGS

in the body of e-mail to:  LISTSERV at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

You can also find it on our web site.  The URL is below.

Thank you all for your understanding and cooperation.

- Alex, list owner of SEELANGS    seelangs-request at listserv.cuny.edu
....................................................................
Alex Rudd                ahrjj at cunyvm.cuny.edu            ARS KA2ZOO
{Standard Disclaimer}    http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/

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