Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number of 
people who use Emacs outside of a programming context, specifically in 
the Humanities, and there was support for a mailing list dedicated to 
this group.

The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the 
Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project 
without committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which are 
much more programming-focused than the average Humanities user may be 
comfortable with or interested in.

I would be happy to administer this list, and could surely bring on 
others of a similar background and interest. (I'm a member of the 
Savannah Emacs group.)

Proposed address:
emacs-humanities@gnu.org

Proposed description:
This list is for general discussion and help for using GNU Emacs in the 
Humanities. Participants are assumed to be non-programmers and respected 
as such.

-- 
PWR

The single best thing you can do for the world is delete your social 
media accounts.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Karl Fogel]

On 29 Nov 2020, Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions. wrote:
>During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number
>of people who use Emacs outside of a programming context, specifically
>in the Humanities, and there was support for a mailing list dedicated
>to this group.
>
>The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the
>Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project
>without committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which
>are much more programming-focused than the average Humanities user may
>be comfortable with or interested in.
>
>I would be happy to administer this list, and could surely bring on
>others of a similar background and interest. (I'm a member of the
>Savannah Emacs group.)
>
>Proposed address:
>emacs-humanities@gnu.org
>
>Proposed description:
>This list is for general discussion and help for using GNU Emacs in
>the Humanities. Participants are assumed to be non-programmers and
>respected as such.

This seems like a useful idea.  I looked at https://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=emacs to see how one would request the creation of a new Emacs-related mailing list, but I didn't find an answer.  Do you already know, or does someone here know how?

Best regards,
-Karl

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Bob Newell]

Aloha,

I would be quite interested in such a list. I do happen to be
an at least somewhat capable programmer but in fact my main
use for Emacs is in writing and publishing.

So I would say that the group should assume that members are
not necessarily programmers rather than not programmers at
all. And we should keep in mind that some of the discussion
will inevitably get into useful packages and perhaps useful
code snippets.

That said, I agree the group should stay non-programmer
friendly.

Great idea!

-- 
Bob Newell
Honolulu, Hawai`i

- Via GNU/Linux/Emacs/Gnus/BBDB

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>
> Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2020 19:24:42 -0600
> Cc: "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@skeletons.cc>
> 
> I looked at https://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=emacs to see how one would request the creation of a new Emacs-related mailing list, but I didn't find an answer.  Do you already know, or does someone here know how?

You ask me or Lars, that's how.

However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
to this new list, for it to be useful?

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Zhu Zihao]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1458 bytes --]


That sounds good, but an important question is: How can I search across
different lists?

There's already two lists: emacs-devel@gnu.org and bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
There's also emacs-tagnent@gnu.org but rarely used. Searching answer for
a existing question in maillist will be very inefficient and may result
in duplicated discussion.

Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions. writes:

> During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number of people
> who use Emacs outside of a programming context, specifically in the Humanities,
> and there was support for a mailing list dedicated to this group.
>
> The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the Humanities a
> way to become more directly involved with the project without committing to the
> emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which are much more programming-focused
> than the average Humanities user may be comfortable with or interested in.
>
> I would be happy to administer this list, and could surely bring on others of a
> similar background and interest. (I'm a member of the Savannah Emacs group.)
>
> Proposed address:
> emacs-humanities@gnu.org
>
> Proposed description:
> This list is for general discussion and help for using GNU Emacs in the
> Humanities. Participants are assumed to be non-programmers and respected 
> as such.


-- 
Retrieve my PGP public key: https://meta.sr.ht/~citreu.pgp

Zihao

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
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Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

On 2020-11-30 13:31, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> You ask me or Lars, that's how.
> 
> However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> to this new list, for it to be useful?

Cool, you wanna go ahead and create it?

Nothing further is expected. I imagine there will be little-to-no 
overlap between emacs-devel and emacs-humanities discussions. In fact it 
would probably work best if it were clear it's not a tech support line, 
in which case I'll revise the proposed description to:

>  This list is for general discussion on using GNU Emacs in the 
> Humanities. Participants are assumed to be non-programmers and 
> respected as such.

If GNU's preference is for someone at GNU to admin the list that would 
also be my first preference, but if you want someone else, I'm happy to.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Karl Fogel]

On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
>developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
>to this new list, for it to be useful?

I don't think we need to assume that.  Emacs's extensibility and customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions that users can make to each other without getting active core developers involved.  And when a topic does warrant the attention of a maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate).

Best regards,
-Karl

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I think this is a good idea, provided there are people we can count on
to keep our goals and principles visible freqiently on the ilst.

Without people to do that, and explain how they affect our decisions,
there is a danger that the list will fill up with people who don't
value our principles and goals, perhaps because they don't know about
them, and who will try to make decisions about what we should do based
the goals and non-principles most people have about software.

We can't ask the Emacs maintainers to do this, because they are
already busy and we can't load then further.

Can you find three people willing to make the commitment?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

On November 30, 2020 6:40:00 AM GMT+02:00, Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> wrote:
> On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> >developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> >to this new list, for it to be useful?
> 
> I don't think we need to assume that.  Emacs's extensibility and
> customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions
> that users can make to each other without getting active core
> developers involved.  And when a topic does warrant the attention of a
> maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps
> by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate).

Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions, suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something here.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

On 2020-11-30 15:41, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group
> of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
> suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even
> help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
> dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
> this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
> initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
> here.

There's no cause to worry. The three things you list -- non-trivial 
questions, bugs, and feature requests -- are already covered by the 
other lists, where diligent Emacs developers remain on guard. There 
exists a discussion scope outside of that scope.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions."
<emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number
> of people who use Emacs outside of a programming context, specifically
> in the Humanities, and there was support for a mailing list dedicated
> to this group.

I'm not against adding new mailing lists, but in my experience, adding a
specialised sub-list with a somewhat vague agenda just leads to having
yet another semi-dead mailing list...

And how would this list differ from help-gnu-emacs?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Michael Albinus]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> to this new list, for it to be useful?

I do expect this list to appear on gmane. I, for example, would
subscribe to that gmane group then, w/o the burden of getting further
emails. As I do with all Emacs related mailing lists I'm interested in.

Best regards, Michael.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Gregory Heytings via Emacs development discussions.]

>
> During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number of 
> people who use Emacs outside of a programming context, specifically in 
> the Humanities, and there was support for a mailing list dedicated to 
> this group.
>
> The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the 
> Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project 
> without committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which are 
> much more programming-focused than the average Humanities user may be 
> comfortable with or interested in.
>

Like Lars, I don't see what fundamental difference of scope between 
emacs-humanities and help-gnu-emacs is.  Isn't the scope of 
emacs-humanities a subset of the scope of help-gnu-emacs?  If so, would it 
not be simpler to add a "[humanities]" tag (for example) to posts on 
help-gnu-emacs which might be of interest to, or are posted by, humanities 
users?

Another way to ask the same question: why would this list be limited to 
"humanities"?  There are people who use Emacs neither for programming nor 
for the humanities.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Pankaj Jangid]

Gregory Heytings via "Emacs development discussions."
<emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

>>
>> During EmacsConf 2020 it became clear that there is a sizeable number
>> of people who use Emacs outside of a programming context,
>> specifically in the Humanities, and there was support for a mailing
>> list dedicated to this group.
>>
>> The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the
>> Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project
>> without committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which
>> are much more programming-focused than the average Humanities user
>> may be comfortable with or interested in.
>>
>
> Like Lars, I don't see what fundamental difference of scope between
> emacs-humanities and help-gnu-emacs is.  Isn't the scope of
> emacs-humanities a subset of the scope of help-gnu-emacs?  If so,
> would it not be simpler to add a "[humanities]" tag (for example) to
> posts on help-gnu-emacs which might be of interest to, or are posted
> by, humanities users?
>
> Another way to ask the same question: why would this list be limited
> to "humanities"?  There are people who use Emacs neither for
> programming nor for the humanities.

With all due respect for the original idea, I just want to point out
that we can also use `emacs-tangets' mailing list if the goal is not to
indulge in help or development topics.

BTW, for the admins, I went to this url to check the description of
`emacs-tangets' and found nothing there:
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Leo Vivier]

Hi there,

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> I don't think we need to assume that.  Emacs's extensibility and
>> customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions
>> that users can make to each other without getting active core
>> developers involved.  And when a topic does warrant the attention of a
>> maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps
>> by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate).
>
> Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group
> of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
> suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even
> help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
> dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
> this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
> initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
> here.

I share Eli’s position on the matter.  As interesting as the underlying
project might be, I believe it’s a little premature to create a new
list, especially if we’re not articulating it with anything else.

Getting more people to use Free software within the academe is a cause
close to my heart, and many people seem to be sharing this sentiment in
the wake of the EmacsConf 2020.  I’ve scheduled a meeting with some of
the interested parties to start the discussion and formulate next-steps
with the hope that we might spearhead the federation of that community
in 2021.  In the meantime, I would invite people who are interested in
the project to bide their time; we’ll publicise soon enough.

Best,

-- 
Leo Vivier
Freelance Software Engineer
Website: www.leovivier.com | Blog: www.zaeph.net

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Jean Louis]

Great proposal Paul,

* Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions. <emacs-devel@gnu.org> [2020-11-29 18:02]:
> The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the
> Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project without
> committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which are much more
> programming-focused than the average Humanities user may be comfortable with
> or interested in.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:03:50 +1000
> From: "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@skeletons.cc>
> Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On 2020-11-30 15:41, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group
> > of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
> > suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even
> > help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
> > dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
> > this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
> > initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
> > here.
> 
> There's no cause to worry. The three things you list -- non-trivial 
> questions, bugs, and feature requests -- are already covered by the 
> other lists, where diligent Emacs developers remain on guard. There 
> exists a discussion scope outside of that scope.

Then I think this different scope should be somehow mentioned in the
list description.  Could you give some examples of what you envision
as good topics to discuss on this new list, and how they differ from
discussions on help-gnu-emacs or emacs-devel?  With such examples in
hand, we could try coming up with a better description, because what
you proposed is too similar to help-gnu-emacs.

One other thing is that the list will need a moderator, to handle the
small number of valid posts by those who aren't subscribers.  Would
you like to be the moderator, and if so, would you like the moderation
requests to arrive at the email address you used in this discussion?
If not, what other moderator address should I use?

Once we have these two aspects figured out, I will create the list.

Thanks.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:36:39 +0100
> Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>, pwr@skeletons.cc, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> > developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> > to this new list, for it to be useful?
> 
> I do expect this list to appear on gmane. I, for example, would
> subscribe to that gmane group then, w/o the burden of getting further
> emails. As I do with all Emacs related mailing lists I'm interested in.

I meant the fact of participation, no matter what will be the medium.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Corwin Brust]

I also like this idea.  It seems more interesting to us neos than to
the core devs.

Maybe we should take the discussion of whether this should be a
different list from tangents to the emacs tangents list.

Corwin

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 8:41 AM Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:
>
> Great proposal Paul,
>
> * Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions. <emacs-devel@gnu.org> [2020-11-29 18:02]:
> > The benefit of such a list would allow those using Emacs within the
> > Humanities a way to become more directly involved with the project without
> > committing to the emacs-devel or help-gnu-emacs lists, which are much more
> > programming-focused than the average Humanities user may be comfortable with
> > or interested in.
>
>


-- 
Corwin
corwin@bru.st

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Corwin Brust]

Hi Eli & everybody!

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:12 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
> > Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:36:39 +0100
> > Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>, pwr@skeletons.cc, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> >
> > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> >
> > > However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> > > developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> > > to this new list, for it to be useful?
> >
> > I do expect this list to appear on gmane. I, for example, would
> > subscribe to that gmane group then, w/o the burden of getting further
> > emails. As I do with all Emacs related mailing lists I'm interested in.
>
> I meant the fact of participation, no matter what will be the medium.
>

If it is a new list is created (or even if this becomes a new
"meta-thread" carried on in Tangents), we could report back every
couple of months to the devel group, to ensure that consensus points
are given for input to the core team of emacs developers for
consideration, discussion, and alignment.  I'll risk speaking for Jean
and say: I think the two of us together could make that "reporting
back regularly" part happen.

Corwin
corwin@bru.st

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Pankaj Jangid <pankaj@codeisgreat.org>
> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 18:59:03 +0530
> Cc: Gregory Heytings <ghe@sdf.org>, "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@skeletons.cc>
> 
> BTW, for the admins, I went to this url to check the description of
> `emacs-tangets' and found nothing there:
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents

Fixed.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Leo Vivier <zaeph@zaeph.net> writes:

> Hi there,
>
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>> I don't think we need to assume that.  Emacs's extensibility and
>>> customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions
>>> that users can make to each other without getting active core
>>> developers involved.  And when a topic does warrant the attention of a
>>> maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps
>>> by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate).
>>
>> Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group
>> of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
>> suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even
>> help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
>> dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
>> this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
>> initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
>> here.
>
> I share Eli’s position on the matter.  As interesting as the underlying
> project might be, I believe it’s a little premature to create a new
> list, especially if we’re not articulating it with anything else.
>
> Getting more people to use Free software within the academe is a cause
> close to my heart, and many people seem to be sharing this sentiment in
> the wake of the EmacsConf 2020.  I’ve scheduled a meeting with some of
> the interested parties to start the discussion and formulate next-steps
> with the hope that we might spearhead the federation of that community
> in 2021.  In the meantime, I would invite people who are interested in
> the project to bide their time; we’ll publicise soon enough.

This sounds very interesting, and something I'd love to participate in!
I will bide my time :)

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Jean Louis]

* Corwin Brust <corwin@bru.st> [2020-11-30 19:21]:
> Hi Eli & everybody!
> 
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:12 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> >
> > > From: Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
> > > Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:36:39 +0100
> > > Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>, pwr@skeletons.cc, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > >
> > > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> > >
> > > > However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
> > > > developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
> > > > to this new list, for it to be useful?
> > >
> > > I do expect this list to appear on gmane. I, for example, would
> > > subscribe to that gmane group then, w/o the burden of getting further
> > > emails. As I do with all Emacs related mailing lists I'm interested in.
> >
> > I meant the fact of participation, no matter what will be the medium.
> >
> 
> If it is a new list is created (or even if this becomes a new
> "meta-thread" carried on in Tangents), we could report back every
> couple of months to the devel group, to ensure that consensus points
> are given for input to the core team of emacs developers for
> consideration, discussion, and alignment.  I'll risk speaking for Jean
> and say: I think the two of us together could make that "reporting
> back regularly" part happen.

Sounds like delegation of activities.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Karl Fogel]

On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>On November 30, 2020 6:40:00 AM GMT+02:00, Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> wrote:
>> On 30 Nov 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> >However, I don't understand what is expected from the active Emacs
>> >developers wrt this list.  It sounds like they will need to subscribe
>> >to this new list, for it to be useful?
>> 
>> I don't think we need to assume that.  Emacs's extensibility and
>> customizability mean that there are plenty of beneficial suggestions
>> that users can make to each other without getting active core
>> developers involved.  And when a topic does warrant the attention of a
>> maintainer, then someone from the new list can come find one (perhaps
>> by posting on Emacs Devel if appropriate).
>
>Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group of
>people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
>suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?

Yes, I think it could work.  To your second question, there are two non-mutually-exclusive answers:

First, plenty of free software (and even non-free software) applications have domain-specific users groups that don't involve a lot of participation from active maintainers.  It's normal for there to be expert users who, although they are not maintainers, still have collectively a large body of knowledge to share.  For example, on this proposed list, I would expect a lot of people who have expertise in using TeX / LaTeX modes in Emacs to answer questions -- and there is probably only slight correlation between having that expertise and being an Emacs maintainer.

Second, in the particular case of Emacs, the software's extensible architecture makes it especially probable that non-maintainer users would have deep expertise in certain areas.  There are so many specialized modes available, and so many domain-specific usage tips and configuration tricks, that whether a person is or is not an active *maintainer* of Emacs might not correlate very strongly with that person participating usefully in a discussion.  (Also, don't code contributions regularly come in from people who are not maintainers?)

>Even help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
>dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
>this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
>initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
>here.

The cost if the experiment fails is a dead list sitting on a server.  That cost doesn't seem very high to me in any case, and given the enthusiasm we've heard so far for it, I think the chances that the experiment would fail -- or at least that it would fail quickly -- are probably at worst 50%.

Remember, someone *from* the domain in question is coming to us and saying that there is interest (and others have corroborated).  If we say "yes" 10 times, and 9 of those times fail, and 1 time there is a new mailing list that turns out to be the right watering hole for a sub-community of users, well, that seems like a pretty good outcome to me.  (Unless the list creation/admin overhead is much higher than I would normally assume.)

I understood the 'emacs-tangents' list to be basically a default place to get certain discussions off of 'emacs-devel'.  But this proposed new list is different.  It's not defined by a negative space, it's defined by a positive space: a semi-cohesive group that is likely to have various usage needs in common, and whose needs may eventually make their way back to Emacs Devel in the form of beneficial suggestions for Emacs.  I could be wrong about this, of course; I'm just saying the chances look good enough that IMHO creating the list and seeing if it works is worth it.

Best regards,
-Karl

RE: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Drew Adams]

Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...

> The cost if the experiment fails is a dead list sitting on a server.
> That cost doesn't seem very high to me in any case

... but there's also the possible cost of others who
might be interested or able to help missing some info
or questions that they might be able to help with.

emacs-tangents is hardly used.  It's essentially
a catch-all.

help-emacs-window isn't used a lot.  But it's pretty 
precisely targeted.  "Humanities" is not (IMO).

An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
"humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
mentioned above).

The same approach could be adopted for any other
potential "subgroup" of an Emacs list.  And it makes
it pretty easy for people to filter, sort, etc.,
whether or not they're interesting in topics of the
subgroup.

Just a thought.  The basic idea is to try something
out, to see how much traffic/interest there is,
before sending people off to a new list.

RE: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Gregory Heytings via Emacs development discussions.]

>
> An alternative might be to start by inviting potential "humanities" 
> participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or emacs-tangents?), but with a 
> particular prefix in the Subject line.
>

+1

>
> If volume becomes reasonably high then a new mailing list could be spun 
> off to handle it (but with the attendant lack of visibility to some that 
> I mentioned above).
>

In fact this is not even necessary.  With GNU Mailman list administrators 
can define "topics" (regular expressions on subject lines), and list users 
can if the want subscribe only to the topics of the list in which they are 
interested.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Karl Fogel]

On 30 Nov 2020, Drew Adams wrote:
>Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...
>
>> The cost if the experiment fails is a dead list sitting on a server.
>> That cost doesn't seem very high to me in any case
>
>... but there's also the possible cost of others who
>might be interested or able to help missing some info
>or questions that they might be able to help with.
>
>emacs-tangents is hardly used.  It's essentially
>a catch-all.
>
>help-emacs-window isn't used a lot.  But it's pretty 
>precisely targeted.  "Humanities" is not (IMO).
>
>An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
>"humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
>emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
>Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
>a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
>with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
>mentioned above).
>
>The same approach could be adopted for any other
>potential "subgroup" of an Emacs list.  And it makes
>it pretty easy for people to filter, sort, etc.,
>whether or not they're interesting in topics of the
>subgroup.
>
>Just a thought.  The basic idea is to try something
>out, to see how much traffic/interest there is,
>before sending people off to a new list.

That sounds like a good (and easy) approach to see if there really is a well-defined interest group here.  Gregory Heytings also suggested it.

(And, of course, anyone is free to go and create an 'emacs-humanities' mailing list on some server that they have access to -- there's no strong reason it has to be @gnu.org, except for a bit of findability bonus.)

Best regards,
-Karl

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Of course Emacs is meant for work that is not related to programming.
It always has been -- and we discuss such uses in the manual.

There is a big difference between "working on or in the humanities"
and "work that is not related to programming."  Which one is this
proposal about?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[tomas]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 03:17:23PM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:
> Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...

[...]

> An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
> "humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
> emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
> Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
> a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
> with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
> mentioned above).

At first blush a good idea. After giving it a second
thought, I think one of the strong points of a separate
list might be that non-hackers (by which I mean those
that consider themselves to be non-hackers!) might feel
intimidated by volume, style or content (or all three!)
of help-gnu-emacs.

I concur that the cost of setting up a new mailing list
is minimal.

Perhaps... to reassure those fearing lots of "empty"
lists, perhaps it should be wise to sketch some kind
of "teardown procedure": six months after set up, if
less than N mails per time unit have been seen, a
teardown message is sent. If nobody complains, the
list is shut down. Or something.

But then perhaps this is just one more sticky bit of
red tape.

Cheers
 - t

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Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[tomas]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 03:17:23PM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:
> Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...

[...]

> ... but there's also the possible cost of others who
> might be interested or able to help missing some info
> or questions that they might be able to help with.

whoops. I realise I didn't take on your main point in
my other answer. Sorry.

At the moment there are a couple of voices who are willing
to participate in -humanities who carry enough experience
to fill in that role (if necessary forwarding to other
lists).

Cheers
 - t

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Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[황병희]

Bob Newell <bobnewell@bobnewell.net> writes:

> Aloha,
>
> I would be quite interested in such a list. I do happen to be
> an at least somewhat capable programmer but in fact my main
> use for Emacs is in writing and publishing.
>
> So I would say that the group should assume that members are
> not necessarily programmers rather than not programmers at
> all. And we should keep in mind that some of the discussion
> will inevitably get into useful packages and perhaps useful
> code snippets.
>
> That said, I agree the group should stay non-programmer
> friendly.
>
> Great idea!

I also use Emacs for writing and publishing, thanks^^^

Sincerely, Byung-Hee

-- 
^고맙습니다 _和合團結_ 감사합니다_^))//

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Jean Louis]

* Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> [2020-12-01 00:28]:
> First, plenty of free software (and even non-free software)
> applications have domain-specific users groups that don't involve a
> lot of participation from active maintainers.  It's normal for there
> to be expert users who, although they are not maintainers, still
> have collectively a large body of knowledge to share.  For example,
> on this proposed list, I would expect a lot of people who have
> expertise in using TeX / LaTeX modes in Emacs to answer questions --
> and there is probably only slight correlation between having that
> expertise and being an Emacs maintainer.

Then if for TeX / LaTex than it is more useful to work with known
mailing list such as gnu-emacs-help@gnu.org in separate threads. But
if it is for general help to help people write books than such could
fall into humanities. I was just expecting such mailing list to be for
those who are in sciences, but not directly computer sciences. LaTeX
is typesetting, I use it since decades, but is not necessarily
generic. There is TeXmacs software and LyX for LaTeX that do maybe
better job than Emacs.

Things like how to structure books, how to find references, making
collective knowledge for people in relation to various sciences such
as literature and having such accessible from Emacs would be something
falling into category of humanities, so for me.

For me the term humanities would mean something like level of
discussions on how to help general people though intelligent social
approaches. Some people could program and some could plan on helping
others.

humanities

* Overview of noun humanities

The noun humanities has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)

1. humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts, arts -- (studies
intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather
than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and
sciences")

I do not think that LaTeX exports fall into general knowledge. But I
think that LyX would be first tool if offered as general knowledge
tool. Emacs is in my opinion not due to its advanced nature and lack
of good integrations specifically to LaTeX as implemented by LyX and
Emacs. User of LyX need not know much about LaTeX to write high
quality books and articles with it.

Examples of approaches that I would think of are following:

- helping people learn how to read and write, planning a program,
  executing such in those areas of the world where needed

- helping minority languages and so those minorities of people to get
  broader record or educational facilities,

- implementing GNU Health access through Emacs and programs for
  hospitals to adopt them, counting how many have adopted it

- helping people read books, and write books by using Emacs.

- establishing offline access to Wikipedia and Wiktionary by using
  Emacs.

- scripts for theaters, programs for actors and for music, and
  similar.

If it is again only specifically Emacs-modes related than why make a
special list when issues of LaTeX in Emacs can be posted into the
anyway under-trafficed gnu-emacs-help mailing list.

> Second, in the particular case of Emacs, the software's extensible
> architecture makes it especially probable that non-maintainer users
> would have deep expertise in certain areas.  There are so many
> specialized modes available, and so many domain-specific usage tips
> and configuration tricks, that whether a person is or is not an
> active *maintainer* of Emacs might not correlate very strongly with
> that person participating usefully in a discussion.  (Also, don't
> code contributions regularly come in from people who are not
> maintainers?)

> The cost if the experiment fails is a dead list sitting on a server.
> That cost doesn't seem very high to me in any case, and given the
> enthusiasm we've heard so far for it, I think the chances that the
> experiment would fail -- or at least that it would fail quickly --
> are probably at worst 50%.

There are many dead lists. If you need help, just ask and invite
others. If one mailing list would be overflown of questions related to
TeX/LaTeX than fine.

I do not mind being subscribed to several mailing lists.

I just see that people would be without reason excluded from areas
where they could help. Isn't it not enough to separate by threads?

> I understood the 'emacs-tangents' list to be basically a default
> place to get certain discussions off of 'emacs-devel'.  But this
> proposed new list is different.  It's not defined by a negative
> space, it's defined by a positive space: a semi-cohesive group that
> is likely to have various usage needs in common, and whose needs may
> eventually make their way back to Emacs Devel in the form of
> beneficial suggestions for Emacs.  I could be wrong about this, of
> course; I'm just saying the chances look good enough that IMHO
> creating the list and seeing if it works is worth it.

If somebody would be making good advertising for many people to
participate that would be useful. If there is no power, engine, money
or method to bring people into discussions actually related to
humanities, then gnu-emacs-help sounds good place to discuss,
especially as it needs more people to promote Emacs.

Jean

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Jean Louis]

* tomas@tuxteam.de <tomas@tuxteam.de> [2020-12-01 11:58]:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 03:17:23PM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:
> > Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...
> 
> [...]
> 
> > An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
> > "humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
> > emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
> > Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
> > a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
> > with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
> > mentioned above).
> 
> At first blush a good idea. After giving it a second
> thought, I think one of the strong points of a separate
> list might be that non-hackers (by which I mean those
> that consider themselves to be non-hackers!) might feel
> intimidated by volume, style or content (or all three!)
> of help-gnu-emacs.
> 
> I concur that the cost of setting up a new mailing list
> is minimal.

That then introduces moderation demands or logically exclusion of some
hackerish talks there. Hackers will be first to find the list.

RE: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Drew Adams]

> > Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...
> [...]
> > An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
> > "humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
> > emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
> > Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
> > a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
> > with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
> > mentioned above).
> 
> At first blush a good idea. After giving it a second
> thought, I think one of the strong points of a separate
> list might be that non-hackers (by which I mean those
> that consider themselves to be non-hackers!) might feel
> intimidated by volume, style or content (or all three!)
> of help-gnu-emacs.

Yes, that is a potential downside, for such users.
OTOH, they may get more eyeballs from people who
may be able to help with some of the Emacs(-Lisp)
side of things.

The idea is to grow things incrementally.  The
more such users there are, the more who are
inconvenienced in the way you suggest, and the
more impetus to spin off a separate list.  

In a nutshell: try inviting "humanities" (or any
other category of) users with a simple approach,
and see how it goes.  Deal with it accordingly
after everyone has seen what the real need/want is.

> I concur that the cost of setting up a new mailing list
> is minimal.

That's not really the question, to me at least.

> Perhaps... to reassure those fearing lots of "empty"
> lists,

To be clear, I don't fear empty lists.  That isn't
why I made the suggestion to start by labeling mail
in an existing list.

> perhaps it should be wise to sketch some kind
> of "teardown procedure": six months after set up, if
> less than N mails per time unit have been seen, a
> teardown message is sent. If nobody complains, the
> list is shut down. Or something.

I'd suggest that no such predefined rule be set up,
and that people just play it by ear.  IOW, see how it
goes and adapt accordingly.  IOW, have a discussion
about how best to handle whatever traffic develops
once we can see what that traffic might really look like.

> But then perhaps this is just one more sticky bit of
> red tape.

Develop red tape as needed, not before then.  Lazy
evaluation.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eric Abrahamsen]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 03:17:23PM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:
>> Chiming in here, but not with a strong opinion...
>
> [...]
>
>> An alternative might be to start by inviting potential
>> "humanities" participants to use help-gnu-emacs (or
>> emacs-tangents?), but with a particular prefix in the
>> Subject line.  If volume becomes reasonably high then
>> a new mailing list could be spun off to handle it (but
>> with the attendant lack of visibility to some that I
>> mentioned above).
>
> At first blush a good idea. After giving it a second
> thought, I think one of the strong points of a separate
> list might be that non-hackers (by which I mean those
> that consider themselves to be non-hackers!) might feel
> intimidated by volume, style or content (or all three!)
> of help-gnu-emacs.
>
> I concur that the cost of setting up a new mailing list
> is minimal.
>
> Perhaps... to reassure those fearing lots of "empty"
> lists, perhaps it should be wise to sketch some kind
> of "teardown procedure": six months after set up, if
> less than N mails per time unit have been seen, a
> teardown message is sent. If nobody complains, the
> list is shut down. Or something.

It occurs to me that, more than other areas of Emacs usage, this topic
would benefit from relying on the wiki. The kinds of tips and
information that academics will find useful might lend themselves well
to a "knowledgebase" sort of presentation, and emacswiki could be ideal
for that. We could have a separate area on the wiki, and at the top note
that if you want to discuss any of the information in that section,
write to emacs-help with such-and-such a prefix.

Then the top-level wiki page could be the main entry point to the whole
project, and that could be the link that gets sent around when trying to
do outreach to the academic community.

It would also give us a nice initial launch, if we could get a few Emacs
users to do full writeups on the wiki about various aspects of Emacs
usage in the humanities.

Just a thought,
Eric

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[tomas]

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On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 08:46:23AM -0800, Drew Adams wrote:

[...]

> > But then perhaps this is just one more sticky bit of
> > red tape.
> 
> Develop red tape as needed, not before then.  Lazy
> evaluation.

:-)

Exactly my feeling.

Cheers
 - t

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Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > The kinds of tips and
  > information that academics will find useful might lend themselves well
  > to a "knowledgebase" sort of presentation, and emacswiki could be ideal
  > for that. We could have a separate area on the wiki, and at the top note
  > that if you want to discuss any of the information in that section,
  > write to emacs-help with such-and-such a prefix.

It might be useful, but it might backfire at a deeper level.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the people
who set up emacswiki do not have a connection to the GNU Project,
and do not see a problem in advising people to use nonfree software.
More generally, they present nonfree software as acceptable
and not as something we should all shun.

If that is so, directing people to emacswiki exacerbates the promotion
of that point of view.  That would be a reason for us to make some
other choice.  When we ask people to write material about using Emacs,
we would be more effective if we ask people to publish it via gnu.org.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > The kinds of tips and
>   > information that academics will find useful might lend themselves well
>   > to a "knowledgebase" sort of presentation, and emacswiki could be ideal
>   > for that. We could have a separate area on the wiki, and at the top note
>   > that if you want to discuss any of the information in that section,
>   > write to emacs-help with such-and-such a prefix.
>
> It might be useful, but it might backfire at a deeper level.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the people
> who set up emacswiki do not have a connection to the GNU Project,
> and do not see a problem in advising people to use nonfree software.
> More generally, they present nonfree software as acceptable
> and not as something we should all shun.
>
> If that is so, directing people to emacswiki exacerbates the promotion
> of that point of view.  That would be a reason for us to make some
> other choice.  When we ask people to write material about using Emacs,
> we would be more effective if we ask people to publish it via gnu.org.

I wasn't aware of these issues with emacswiki, thank you for bringing
that up.

It wasn't so much that it had to be emacswiki, but that I think this
effort might be best served by a semi-static knowledgebase, with a
mailing list being a supplement to that.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

Ping!  Paul, I'm waiting for your responses, and will create the list
once we have that figured out.  TIA.

> Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 18:02:48 +0200
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Cc: kfogel@red-bean.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 16:03:50 +1000
> > From: "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@skeletons.cc>
> > Cc: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > 
> > On 2020-11-30 15:41, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > Do you really think this will work?  I don't, FWIW.  How can a group
> > > of people not involved with development answer non-trivial questions,
> > > suggest reporting useful bugs and feature requests etc.?  Even
> > > help-gnu-emacs would not be the same without several developers
> > > dwelling there.  Posting to emacs-devel is a slippery path to making
> > > this new list a branch of the existing ones, something that this
> > > initiative wants explicitly to avoid.  I'm probably missing something
> > > here.
> > 
> > There's no cause to worry. The three things you list -- non-trivial 
> > questions, bugs, and feature requests -- are already covered by the 
> > other lists, where diligent Emacs developers remain on guard. There 
> > exists a discussion scope outside of that scope.
> 
> Then I think this different scope should be somehow mentioned in the
> list description.  Could you give some examples of what you envision
> as good topics to discuss on this new list, and how they differ from
> discussions on help-gnu-emacs or emacs-devel?  With such examples in
> hand, we could try coming up with a better description, because what
> you proposed is too similar to help-gnu-emacs.
> 
> One other thing is that the list will need a moderator, to handle the
> small number of valid posts by those who aren't subscribers.  Would
> you like to be the moderator, and if so, would you like the moderation
> requests to arrive at the email address you used in this discussion?
> If not, what other moderator address should I use?
> 
> Once we have these two aspects figured out, I will create the list.
> 
> Thanks.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

Hi Eli,

Sorry for the delayed response.

Upon consulting Wikipedia, it seems that in the US the term "Humanities" 
has a narrower definition, i.e. as distinct from the arts and social 
sciences. For emacs-deval readers in the US, emacs-humanities would 
cover the Liberal Arts.

So, a more precise description:

This list is for general discussion on using GNU Emacs in the Humanities 
and Emacs-related topics that are interesting to those who study or 
otherwise participate in the Humanities (also called Liberal Arts in N. 
America). Discussion here welcomes contributions from any GNU Emacs user 
(or potential user) involved in the disciplines of: anthropology, 
archaeology, classics, history, linguistics and languages, law and 
politics, literature, philosophy, religion, or the performing or visual 
arts.

Participants are assumed not to have programming knowledge and respected 
as such. Support that requires any writing of code should be directed to 
help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.


How's that? I'm ambivalent about listing all the separate disciplines... 
But I don't think this description needs to be set in stone; I imagine 
it will evolve as the list gains traction (or not).

I'm happy to moderate, although I think the ideal would be to have at 
least one additional moderator because sometimes I go stretches without 
attending to email. (I was sure I saw someone else in this thread put 
their hand up but upon reading back I think perhaps I misread.) I am 
painfully fickle when it comes to email addresses, so to be safe it 
probably should be hello@paulwrankin.com.


On 2020-12-03 00:54, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Ping!  Paul, I'm waiting for your responses, and will create the list
> once we have that figured out.  TIA.
> 
>> Then I think this different scope should be somehow mentioned in the
>> list description.  Could you give some examples of what you envision
>> as good topics to discuss on this new list, and how they differ from
>> discussions on help-gnu-emacs or emacs-devel?  With such examples in
>> hand, we could try coming up with a better description, because what
>> you proposed is too similar to help-gnu-emacs.
>> 
>> One other thing is that the list will need a moderator, to handle the
>> small number of valid posts by those who aren't subscribers.  Would
>> you like to be the moderator, and if so, would you like the moderation
>> requests to arrive at the email address you used in this discussion?
>> If not, what other moderator address should I use?
>> 
>> Once we have these two aspects figured out, I will create the list.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Protesilaos Stavrou]

On 2020-12-03, 18:30 +1000, "Paul W. Rankin" <pwr@skeletons.cc> wrote:

> I'm happy to moderate, although I think the ideal would be to have at least one
> additional moderator because sometimes I go stretches without attending to
> email. (I was sure I saw someone else in this thread put their hand up but upon
> reading back I think perhaps I misread.) I am painfully fickle when it comes to
> email addresses, so to be safe it probably should be hello@paulwrankin.com.

I volunteer to fill in the role of the second moderator (use the "From"
email I have here).

Please send me the necessary documentation on how to perform the
relevant tasks.

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
protesilaos.com

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Jean Louis]

* Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions. <emacs-devel@gnu.org> [2020-12-03 11:31]:
> Hi Eli,
> 
> Sorry for the delayed response.
> 
> Upon consulting Wikipedia, it seems that in the US the term "Humanities" has
> a narrower definition, i.e. as distinct from the arts and social sciences.
> For emacs-deval readers in the US, emacs-humanities would cover the Liberal
> Arts.
> 
> So, a more precise description:
> 
> This list is for general discussion on using GNU Emacs in the Humanities and
> Emacs-related topics that are interesting to those who study or otherwise
> participate in the Humanities (also called Liberal Arts in N. America).
> Discussion here welcomes contributions from any GNU Emacs user (or potential
> user) involved in the disciplines of: anthropology, archaeology, classics,
> history, linguistics and languages, law and politics, literature,
> philosophy, religion, or the performing or visual arts.

That sounds fine to me, partially.

You said people are welcome who are potential users of GNU Emacs. I
hope that also people will be welcome who are potentially interested
users in the discussion that is going on even if they are not involved
directly in some of those disciplines. There is anyway no method of
verification who is involved in some of those disciplines.

> Participants are assumed not to have programming knowledge and
> respected as such. Support that requires any writing of code should
> be directed to help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.

I cannot see than how is the mailing list related to Emacs. Then maybe
you just wish to call it "humanities"?

When there is even setting with init file involved it is already so
that user is participating in the programming and that shall be
encouraged.

Then to tell such users to go to other mailing list is rather counter
productive, as let us say student of the law suddenly wish to write a
report in Org mode, should we then just bounce users from one to other
mailing lists, that does not seem useful.

Overall I am generally supporting any kind of communication between
people. People involved in humanities are already there. 

> I'm happy to moderate, although I think the ideal would be to have
> at least one additional moderator because sometimes I go stretches
> without attending to email. (I was sure I saw someone else in this
> thread put their hand up but upon reading back I think perhaps I
> misread.) I am painfully fickle when it comes to email addresses, so
> to be safe it probably should be hello@paulwrankin.com.

I hope it will not be moderated to exclude people for expressing their
opinions as the description above tells me it leads there. Maybe in
the next revision it will look so much better.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Joost Kremers]

On Thu, Dec 03 2020, Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions. wrote:
> So, a more precise description:
>
> This list is for general discussion on using GNU Emacs in the Humanities 
> and Emacs-related topics that are interesting to those who study or 
> otherwise participate in the Humanities (also called Liberal Arts in N. 
> America). Discussion here welcomes contributions from any GNU Emacs user 
> (or potential user) involved in the disciplines of: anthropology, 
> archaeology, classics, history, linguistics and languages, law and 
> politics, literature, philosophy, religion, or the performing or visual 
> arts.

Personally, I wouldn't formulate it as if the list of disciplines is fixed.
Perhaps something like the following would be better:

"Discussion here welcomes contributions from any GNU Emacs user 
(or potential user) involved in disciplines such as anthropology, [...]"

And perhaps even add an "etc." at the end of the list.

> Participants are assumed not to have programming knowledge and respected 
> as such. 

This formulation might be understood to exclude participants that *do* have
programming knowledge, I think. (At least, that's how I read it...) I assume
that's not your intention, so I'd at least move the "not" forward (which also
requires "are" to be inserted before "respected"):

"Participants are not assumed to have programming knowledge and are respected as
such."

(Honestly, I'm not a fan of the phrase "and are respected as such". It sounds as
if not having programming knowledge is somehow a defect...)

> Support that requires any writing of code should be directed to 
> help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.

This, too, sounds too restrictive IMHO. Adding a few lines to one's init file
can also be considered "writing code"...

My proposal for the second paragraph:

Participants are not assumed to have programming knowledge. Questions and
discussions regarding programming Emacs should generally be directed at
help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.

Just my €0.02, of course.

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

On 2020-12-03 19:43, Jean Louis wrote:
> You said people are welcome who are potential users of GNU Emacs. I
> hope that also people will be welcome who are potentially interested
> users in the discussion that is going on even if they are not involved
> directly in some of those disciplines. There is anyway no method of
> verification who is involved in some of those disciplines.

There is no barrier to entry. If you visit plato.stanford.edu or write a 
haiku and now you are involved in the Humanities as far as I see.

> I cannot see than how is the mailing list related to Emacs. Then maybe
> you just wish to call it "humanities"?
> 
> When there is even setting with init file involved it is already so
> that user is participating in the programming and that shall be
> encouraged.

The prevalent assumption that Emacs = programming is something this list 
attempts to step away from. Emacs can be used without any programming 
knowledge. I used it through my Bachelor's degree without writing a line 
of Elisp.

> Then to tell such users to go to other mailing list is rather counter
> productive, as let us say student of the law suddenly wish to write a
> report in Org mode, should we then just bounce users from one to other
> mailing lists, that does not seem useful.

Eli was concerned about too much similarity with help-gnu-emacs. It is 
not my desire to bounce anyone.

> I hope it will not be moderated to exclude people for expressing their
> opinions as the description above tells me it leads there. Maybe in
> the next revision it will look so much better.

I don't understand what you mean here. The description is an open as I 
could imagine. You are welcome and encouraged to provide another draft 
of the description if you want any revisions.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Paul W. Rankin via Emacs development discussions.]

On 2020-12-03 19:15, Protesilaos Stavrou wrote:
> 
> I volunteer to fill in the role of the second moderator (use the "From"
> email I have here).

Excellent. Thank you. This makes my day.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Arthur Miller]

"Paul W. Rankin" via "Emacs development discussions."
<emacs-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Eli,
>
> Sorry for the delayed response.
>
> Upon consulting Wikipedia, it seems that in the US the term "Humanities" has a
> narrower definition, i.e. as distinct from the arts and social sciences. For
> emacs-deval readers in the US, emacs-humanities would cover the Liberal Arts.
>
> So, a more precise description:
>
> This list is for general discussion on using GNU Emacs in the Humanities and
> Emacs-related topics that are interesting to those who study or otherwise
> participate in the Humanities (also called Liberal Arts in
> N. America). Discussion here welcomes contributions from any GNU Emacs user (or
> potential user) involved in the disciplines of: anthropology, archaeology,
> classics, history, linguistics and languages, law and politics, literature,
> philosophy, religion, or the performing or visual arts.
So are you making a list that will discuss anthropology or Emacs? Are
mathematics students who would like to discuss Emacs banned from the
list because mathematics are not humanities?

Sorry, I am a bit carricaturing here, but as a layman I don't get the purpose
from your description :-). Just trying to give you input from aside. 

> Participants are assumed not to have programming knowledge and respected as
> such. Support that requires any writing of code should be directed to
> help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.
>
>
> How's that? I'm ambivalent about listing all the separate disciplines... But I
> don't think this description needs to be set in stone; I imagine it will evolve
> as the list gains traction (or not).
I don't think you should have any hard-set category.

I suggest just the Emacs-for-non-programmers list or something similar;
if you think another channel is needed (I have no opinion about that one).

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Stefan Monnier]

> I suggest just the Emacs-for-non-programmers list or something similar;

Rather than focus on the profile of the expected user ("programmer" or
"non-programmer") better focus on the expected topics or use-cases,
I think (and no, I don't have any suggestion to make ;-)


        Stefan

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Arthur Miller]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I suggest just the Emacs-for-non-programmers list or something similar;
>
> Rather than focus on the profile of the expected user ("programmer" or
> "non-programmer") better focus on the expected topics or use-cases,

"topic" is a profile itself, just very narrower than what I suggested.
Focus on anthropoligst or archeologist is a focus on a profile already,
isn't it? Programmer/non-programmer is very much wider and more
practical than anthropoligsts/social scientist/philosoph/artist/and what not.

Obviously as I followed this for a day now or so, the OP is trying to
make a list for people who are not developers. So why bother with
"topics" at all? Just look at the discussion; it is already a discussion
about what topics to include and whatever, So unnecessary and time
consuming just because OP started from a category (or topic) as you call it
already. It is not very practical. People will think "do I beong
here"; does this topic belong here, shoujld I post somewhere else etc.
Someone will have to write definitions, expand those with time to come;
moderators will have to moderate topics and remind people to stay
within list topic etc :-). Think outside the box, you have seen that
from social media for 20 years now; from BB-forums to Reddit. 

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> I suggest just the Emacs-for-non-programmers list or something similar;
>> Rather than focus on the profile of the expected user ("programmer" or
>> "non-programmer") better focus on the expected topics or use-cases,
> "topic" is a profile itself, just very narrower than what I suggested.

That's not relevant to my point.  My point is to focus on what it will be
discussed rather than on who will discuss it.


        Stefan

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Arthur Miller]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>>> I suggest just the Emacs-for-non-programmers list or something similar;
>>> Rather than focus on the profile of the expected user ("programmer" or
>>> "non-programmer") better focus on the expected topics or use-cases,
>> "topic" is a profile itself, just very narrower than what I suggested.
>
> That's not relevant to my point.
Yes it was. Very so. By naming categories you are naming also which
users would use it (only users active in that category).

> My point is to focus on what it will be
> discussed rather than on who will discuss it.
Mine too, that is why I suggested such a wide category of users. Call it
emacs-users then. A mailing list for non-developing emacs issues; or
user-related emacs issues. I would be awfully said if mathematicians
wouldn't subscribe because it says anthropolists and archeologists only :-).

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'm glad to see that people have cleared up the confusion about the
purpose of this new mailing list.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2020 11:15:04 +0200
> 
> I volunteer to fill in the role of the second moderator (use the "From"
> email I have here).

Thank you.

The emacs-humanities@gnu.org list is now officially open for
subscribing and posting.  (Note that if you post without subscribing,
your messages will be held for moderation.)

The list information and subscription form can be found at

  https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-humanities

Last, but not least: please remember that this is a GNU list, and so
we request that you behave their as appropriate for GNU lists:
non-promotion of non-free software, keeping the discussion on-topic,
etc.

Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Karl Fogel]

On 12 Dec 2020, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>The emacs-humanities@gnu.org list is now officially open for
>subscribing and posting.  (Note that if you post without subscribing,
>your messages will be held for moderation.)
>
>The list information and subscription form can be found at
>
>  https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-humanities
>
>Last, but not least: please remember that this is a GNU list, and so
>we request that you behave their as appropriate for GNU lists:
>non-promotion of non-free software, keeping the discussion on-topic,
>etc.

Subscribed!  Thank you, Eli.

I'm not going to moderate there, but I will try to keep an eye out for topics that warrant developer attention.  I'm sure there will be others from emacs-devel doing so as well.

Best regards,
-Karl