Proposal: An separate antedatings list

[Dave Wilton]

>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.

The chief advantage that I see in posting antedatings to this (or another
archived list) is in the archives. They're available and searchable by
anyone. Sending them to a dictionary or personal email address means that
they are effectively lost to everyone else.

I rarely read the antedatings when they arrive in my mailbox, but I use the
search function to find the antedatings in the archives all the time.

I like the idea of voluntary tags or subject line formats. These would help
people tell at a glance if it is something they might be interested in.
Antedatings might have a subject of "Antedate: [word], [date]"; eggcorns
could be "Eggcorn: [word]"; etc.

And I also would not like to see ADS-L splinter into different
subject-oriented lists. One of the great values of the list is the variety
of subjects and the exposure to various subfields in the discipline.

The question I would have to people who complain about too many posts is: do
you sort your email into folders? I've set my mail reader to file all the
postings from ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU into an ADS-L folder. Other lists I
subscribe to go into their own folders. 30 messages a day sorted into a
folder isn't a lot. 30 messages mixed up with mail from other lists,
colleagues, friends and family, spam, etc. would be a mess.

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