on announcements to lists

[Bill Mann]

Fellow RST list folk:

I have some thoughts about the language related email lists that are around, and
about how their content is changing.

We have one huge one, LINGUIST, with about 10,000 addressees.  Most of their
traffic these days is some sort of announcements, and discussion has a minor
place.

There are several others with various relationships to this RST list --
DISCOURS, with nearly 600 members, FUNKNET, the ACL special interest lists like
sigdial for dialogue, siggen for natural language generation.  There are more.

The announcements are important, and need to be circulated somehow.

However, I sense a trend on established lists in which substantive discussion is
gradually displaced by announcements.   I am hoping that does not happen with
the RST list.  So it seems timely now, when no announcements have yet been
submitted, to express a preference.

Let me encourage folks to submit their announcements to DISCOURS or LINGUIST
rather than RSTlist.  Both of those lists have RSTlist fully within their scope.
This will work as long as folks are not subscribed solely to RSTlist.  If
details on how to subscribe to those other lists are desired, please ask here.

Certainly there will be discussion questions that are important to RST interests
but not specific to RST.  Those belong either here or wherever the holder wants
them to be seen.  But lets try to keep the RSTlist more for wide ranging
discussion and not for announcements.

Enough said.  If you have a different view I invite and encourage you to state
it.

Best wishes,

Bill Mann