please vote on new AAA ethics statement

[King, Dr Alexander D.]

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to voice my support for the new statement drafted by the committee. I applaud the move from a 'code' toward  a set of 'principles'. I like the statements and the wording is great. I found the text very thoughtful and carefully considered. I voted 'yes' last week and I encourage others to do likewise.

I do have one complaint, however. As a document (an object) the PDF is a mess. It is full of embedded links that make my computer jump from my PDF reader to my browser, which then downloads another PDF which is often just 3-5 lines of text. What is wrong with footnotes! There are some links to full-blown web pages, which I suppose are useful, but PDFs are best used for self-contained documents that have formatting that the author wants preserved across several different platforms or needs to embed custom fonts (very important for linguists!) The ethics statement is really just ASCII text and would be best served by simple HTML. I am hoping that the plan is to make it a HTML web page when (if) it is approved by the AAA membership.

If it must be a PDF, could the committee please just put the notes inside the PDF instead of all the external links?

Alex


On 7 Oct, 2012, at 6:57 PM, Lise Dobrin <lise.dobrin at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> On behalf of the AAA Committee on Ethics, I want to encourage everyone to vote on the new AAA ethics statement before the ballot closes at 5pm EST on Thursday October 25th. I have been watching the AAA code review closely as it's been going on and have been impressed at every step by the conscientiousness of the process. And, if you take a look at the document you will see that it's not just a tweak this time but a real reconceptualization of what a statement like this is and how it can be made useful (it's built in three tiers -- summarizing principles, explication, and embedded links to relevant -- often complicating -- discussions). I believe it sets a new standard for interventions of this kind.
>
> In order to vote, go to the AAA homepage (aaanet.org) and log in. It will give you a 'vote now' box on the right.
> Lise
>
>
> Lise M. Dobrin
> Assistant Professor
> Linguistics Program Director
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Virginia
> Brooks Hall 202
> PO Box 400120
> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4120 USA
> 1-434-924-7048
> dobrin at virginia.edu


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