Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 471.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 14:40:46 +0000
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: omphaloskepic editorial query
Dear Colleagues:
Occasionally I find it useful to ask how we're doing -- a reality-check, if
you will, in the gorgonian face of earning a living, which keeps too many
of our more experienced heads from contributing to Humanist. I can have
whatever reader-response theory I like and my own opinions, but Humanist is
for the community of computing humanists, not for its editor. I would be
especially glad to have responses that deconstruct the complaint of
infoglut, if indeed that is a complaint; I've often found that "too much!"
really means "too much of X" altogether or points to an organisational
problem of some kind. The other day a local colleague commented to me that
whenever he saw a message from individual Y he pushed the delete key
immediately and seemed willing enough to continue that practice. Others,
however, I know to be annoyed that messages are coming from certain people
or on certain topics. As editor I have no compunction about withholding
messages that stray too far from humanities computing or attack some person
or other, but I won't delete ad hominem nor will I withhold a message that
nominally is on topic but is just silly.
My sense (for what it's worth) is that Humanist still has abundant reason
for being. Are there improvements that could be made *without involving any
significantly greater long-term effort from me*?
Yours,
W
-----
Dr Willard McCarty / Senior Lecturer /
Centre for Computing in the Humanities / King's College London /
Strand / London WC2R 2LS / U.K. /
+44 (0)20 7848-2784 / ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/
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