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William Salmon william.salmon at YALE.EDU
Fri Nov 2 01:22:47 UTC 2007


I too like the list the way it is. The antedatings, the Texasisms, the
eggcorns, and the occasional miss-sent sweet nothing. There is a wide
range of interests and interesting people on the list, and I think it
would be unfortunate to parcel these off into various subgroups.

I think Dave Wilton's suggestions below about managing folders on our
individual email accounts--as well as posters being a little more
explicit in the subject bar of their posts are excellent ideas.

WS

nd 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.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



~Will Salmon

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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