[KS] Administrivia

[Robert C. Provine]

Dear Korean-Studies list subscribers:

There have recently been a number of organisational issues discussed on
the list and changes in the main policies of Mailbase, so we'd like to
take a few minutes of your reading time to pass on some information:

1) To control spams (Spanish language classes, etc.), Mailbase has
introduced a new subscription system, in which potential subscribers
must identify themselves and confirm that they wish to subscribe.  This
stops fake email addresses and provides information for quick
termination of spammers' accounts at hotmail and other places.  This
will not affect any current subscribers.

2) From 3 August, you can choose to receive all messages from the list
as a "digest", i.e. a single file sent in the evening (UK time) which
contains all the day's korean-studies messages.  If you want to do
things this way, send the following message to mailbase at mailbase.ac.uk:

set korean-studies digest

3) The "Reply" function in korean-studies is set to send replies to the
whole list, and not privately to the sender of the message to which
you're replying.  Please remember this when you wish to send a private
message -- all you need to do is get the correct address from the
header, which also clarifies that the message has come to you from the
korean-studies list.  Reasons for doing things this way are that a) it
keeps the discussion on the list rather than off it, and b) it allows
useful and effective organisation of discussion archives by thread.

4) Forwarded newspaper articles:  the stated purpose of the
Korean-Studies list is discussion of matters within Korean Studies, and
it is intended for the higher education community (the latter is a
condition of mailbase).  Insofar as a forwarded newspaper article
engenders coherent discussion of issues in Korean Studies, we are glad
to have it.  Like anything, though, too much of a good thing spoils its
effect.  If Frank Tedesco has more articles to send out than the
Korean-Studies list can reasonably handle (either for reasons of
tolerance or simple size, for those whose email systems are on the slow
side), then the idea of a separate mailing list is surely a better
solution than sending them all to the Korean-Studies list.  On the other
hand, we don't think that setting up rival discussion lists would serve
anyone very well.

5) Moderated vs unmoderated lists:  so far, Korean-Studies has a pretty
good record compared to other lists in terms of personal attacks, spams,
time-wasting, irrelevance, etc., and we're loathe to change to a
moderated list in which all submissions have to be filtered by the
"owners".  The list is here for discussion; let's discuss, but keep it
on Korean Studies at a higher education level.  There are various
avenues for dealing with problems:  deleting trouble-makers from the
list and preventing their re-subscribing, polite ostracism (works pretty
well ...), and, as a last resort, having the list moderated by the
owners.  It's better that the owners not impose their own prejudices in
deciding what people are allowed to say, and we suggest that the
exercise of the delete key is not such a severe requirement, especially
given the relatively small amount of traffic on this list.  But we would
be very sorry to see anyone leave the list as a result of differences of
opinion with a small number of other subscribers.

Best wishes -

Rob Provine (r.c.provine at durham.ac.uk)
Stephen Epstein (Stephen.Epstein at vuw.ac.nz)
Owners




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