Re: Proposal for an emacs-humanities mailing list

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

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