Mission of the American Dialect Society--the "so what?" quest

Dave Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Sat Nov 1 21:50:14 UTC 2003


> Cohen has made a good point here.  However, I wish to put in
> my 2 cents here, too.  I presume that all the matters not
> directly dealing with the narrow notion of dialect in the
> society's publication are, for some, a waste of space.  How
> sad that the listserv must be so narrowly conceived. As a
> long-term member of the society, I would feel very much
> alienated if the society's meetings were similarly confined.

I concur. I would also like to reiterate Jesse's comment about this being a
low-volume list. ADS-L averages something around 25 posts a day. I typically
get three times that amount in spam alone. Deleting the unwanted posts on
ADS-L is not a major burden--especially since most of those who post them
use subject line conventions that makes them easy to identify.

It might be a good idea, however, for ADS to promulgate some formal subject
line conventions to enable automatic sorting. Subject line markers, (e.g.,
"DIA:" for posts about dialect or "LEX:" for lexicographic data) would allow
those who didn't want to read posts about certain subjects to filter them
out without a thought.



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