Proposal: An separate antedatings list

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 05:57:40PM -0700, Dave Wilton wrote:
> Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
> >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.

My comment above was, as I hope was clear, with my tongue
somewhat in my cheek.

Yes, the archives are very useful, and the more fragmented
they are, the less useful they are. A separate antedating
list, even if it had the exact same traffic as the relevant
parts of ADS-L do now, is still a PITA. Already we must search
the 1992-99 archives and the post-1999 archives; with an
antedating list that's another archive to search. Given that
(as I believe) ADS-L is mostly on-topic, it's useful to be
able to search for any word-like subject in one
place. (Presumably anyone interested in a given term would be
interested in any discussion of it, e.g. early-but-not-earliest
examples of "jazz" or "whole nine yards".)

> 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.

I agree that everyone would benefit if people were explicit
about the subject of their posts. However I do think that in
most cases it's pretty clear without it being spelled out.
(Eggcorn posts usually have "eggcorn" in the title, posts like
"Blue Laws in 1755" will probably have an antedating or some
other useful cite, etc.)

Jesse Sheidlower

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