Arabic-L:List Matters

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 04 Jan 2000
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: List Matters

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1)
Date: 04 Jan 2000
From: moderator
Subject: List Matters

Electronic lists have a particular culture.  Arabic-L is a moderated list
for a reason: to bring a certain amount of focus, and to cut out extraneous
posts.  The original purpose of the list was to post job announcements,
conference announcements, new publications of books or articles, and other
general information items for Arabic Language teachers, Arabic Linguists,
and people who study Arabic Literature.  However, it has also come to pass
that we have posted a lot of personal queries (where is so and so) data
queries (about particular words or constructions) and in the past
translation queries (how do you say this in Arabic, or how do you translate
it to English).  I stopped posting translation queries some time ago
because there were becoming so common they were 'taking over the list' and
changing the 'feel' of the culture.  My fear was that subscribers who
mainly want the info listed above would get annoyed by too heavy a traffic
in other topics.  However, I didn't want to cut off the ability of scholars
to ask for data, which seems to be a legitimate use of the web.  However,
there is a fine line between helping a professional translator and helping
a scholar, so every time I've published what I judged to be a request for
data (as with the latest on 'jet-lag') I get angry denunciations from those
whose messages I refused to post since I felt they were in the other
category.
So....... here is my current solution:

I am going to add two categories to the list: TRANSQUERIES and DATAQUERIES.
I will post them both at most once a week, and will gather all that come
that week into a single message.  This means that those who want to respond
to these queries will be able to, and those who don't want to will be able
to delete them easily.  Translation queries are basically for translators
working to or from Arabic, and Data queries are for linguists looking for
data.  I will make a judgement about which category your request falls in
unless you specify.

So translators can start sending in their queries again.
Dil


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End of Arabic-L: 04 Jan 2000