Proposal: An separate antedatings list

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 05:13:58PM -0400, Grant Barrett wrote:
> On Nov 1, 2007, at 14:54, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
> >I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be better if those who are
> >interested to start a separate antedatings list.
>
> I second Ron's thought and would like to make it a proposal.
>
> An antedatings list would greatly reduce the noise here and might
> make other messages perceived as off-topic seem more bearable.
>
> The number one complaint I read and hear from subscribers or would-be
> subscribers is that there is simply too much mail from antedatings.
> According to what I have in my ADS folder, in the last four months
> 3691 message have been sent to the list, about 922 a month or 30 a day.
>
> Discussion?
>
> I am particularly interested hearing from antedaters, as any new list
> would be useless unless they moved their postings from ADS-L to the
> new list. I know many of you post them here because you know editors
> for the major dictionaries subscribe, so I also want to hear from the
> dictionary editors: would you also subscribe to the new list? (I
> would, for one.)

I think that ADS-L is a vibrant and active list of long
standing, and that we should be very reluctant to make any
change to it that fragments out subjects that are, after all,
within the purview of the ADS.

Yes, we could split off antedatings, and we could create a
sociolinguistics list, and a dialectology list, and an eggcorn
list. Then we'd end up with a bunch of lists that are more
difficult to deal with and will be less fun.

There is a DSNA list that gets little traffic, and there are
lists devoted to historical slang and historical lexicography
that get very little traffic. I don't think this is something
to emulate.

I'm not interested by everything that appears on ADS-L, but I
am interested in the fact that there's always something.  The
list to me remains incredibly on-topic, and the amount of
personal material that appears here seems to be extremely
small (especially relative to what I see on other lists and
forums, which are often overwhelmingly more about personal
chatter than about their stated topics).

And I can't speak for the antedaters specifically, but I'm
sure that many people who post do so partly because they know
a lot of other people will see it. If not for this, we don't
need to create an antedatings list, because we already have
one--it's called Jesse Sheidlower's e-mail address.

30 messages a day is really not that much.

If there's a topic that ADS members feel is underrepresented
(more hardcore aspects of dialectology, say), they are free to
post more about that.

Those are my personal feelings, and are not in any official or
semi-official capacity relating to the OED or my management of
this list.

Jesse Sheidlower

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