The RSTlist -- Who are we?

[Bill Mann]

To the subscribers of RSTlist:

Welcome to the discussions.  Before getting into any particular topic, you might
be interested to know about fellow subscribers.

There are now just over 100 subscribers.  Judging by email addresses, we are a
very international group.  Aside from the people who use .com, .edu, .gov, .net
or .org in their addresses, there are 24 countries represented.  All of the
continents are represented.  Clearly some are from the USA and Canada, so the
number of countries is about 26.  Personal names show a similar diversity.

Many are from educational institutions.  Addresses are hard to identify with
linguistics versus computation, but clearly substantial numbers of both
affiliations are among us.


Welcome to everyone.  With such an international group especially, the
experienced list providers suggest that we be extra careful to avoid and correct
misunderstandings.  Teasing, jargon, humor based on politics, acceptance and
rejection of ideas,  these are best avoided or done with great care and good
will.  I am sure that with so many who are concerned with communication,  we
have a high level of awareness of these matters.  I look forward to stimulating
and congenial discussions.

The list is open for direct interchange of messages without examination by a
moderator.  I hope that no one abuses it, and that software problems will not
force us to withdraw from this openness.

I do not plan to enable the commands that would allow subscribers to download
the entire list of email addresses.  That is contrary to the practice of most of
these lists, but I am strenuously trying to avoid address abuse.  (One of the
related lists, which has not had this policy, now gets 12 or so spam messages a
week and must review every submission.)  I regret any difficulty that this may
cause any of you.

You should receive another message accompanying this one on the subject: What is
coherence?

Welcome again.

Bill Mann

p.s. If you have not done so, try to visit the related website at

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/RST