LINGUIST List 3.593

Sat 18 Jul 1992

Disc: Citing LINGUIST

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1. Ron Smyth, Re: 3.577 Citing LINGUIST
2. , 3.575 Citing LINGUIST

Message 1: Re: 3.577 Citing LINGUIST

I doubt that we should be citing our LINGUIST contributions on our annual
reports, as they are not subject to peer review; any great ideas that
come while tapping out a msg can be pursued in a paper. However, I did find
a spot on my reporting form for reporting activities in academic associations,
where I mentioned that I read and sometimes contribute to this list.

Regarding privacy and email, in 1989 as I was leaving Carleton University,
the email postmaster contacted my department to complain that she had read
a message I had sent (received?) which contained personal correspondence
instead of serious academic discourse. She threatened to cancel my email
privileges, but since I was leaving anyway I don't know whether or not she
was serious. At the time I contacted Canada's Privacy Commissioner, who
informed me that the issue of privacy in electronic mail was unregulated but
was a matter of some urgency for him.
Ron Smyth
smythlake.scar.utoronto.ca

If I might add a couple remarks to the suggested citation...?

 1) Linguist is archived and will continue to be archived at the
 net archives at the University of Michigan. The ftp address
 is linguistics.archive.umich.edu, and the appropriate directory
 is linguistics/linguist.list/volume.N (where N is the volume number,
 which is equal to (year_of_issue minus 1989), hence volume.3 currently).

 The issues are archived in bunches of 50, together with obiter dicta
 like the How-To messages. The first of each volume is no.001-050,
 the second no.051-100, etc. Each has about 200-400 KBytes and all
 are accessible for anonymous ftp, along with everything else on
 the linguistics archive. A mail server is in the works, but is
 not currently available.

 2) As David Powers points out, Linguist is not a bulletin board, and
 careful citation practice should distinguish this. Calling it a
 bulletin board (as the newspaper report Christine Kamprath posted
 does) and using verbs like "call in to" (ditto) gives quite the
 wrong impression. I was very discouraged at the low level of
 understanding evidenced by the article. It's bad enough we have
 to deal with public ignorance of language and linguistic issues;
 if we have technological ignorance on top of that, we're sunk.

 3) It's *very* important to put the year, and only slightly less to
 note the month. Linguist 3.575 is not enough, even though it may
 allow one to find the citation; you shouldn't have to look it up
 to know what year it comes from. This is all new to us, but it
 will be old stuff ten years from now, and we won't be able to tell
 '92 from '93 or '91.

So, an amended version of the citation (which needs paring, I'm afraid):

 Christine Kamprath (LIFY460orange.cc.utexas.edu.internet),
 "Re: 3.562 Accents: LINGUIST in the news",
 Linguist List 3.575, July 1992,
 linguistics/linguist.list/volume.3/no.551-600,
 linguistics.archive.umich.edu.internet

 (Linguist (linguisttamsun.tamu.edu) is an electronic mail list edited by:
 Anthony Aristar (e311aatamuts.tamu.edu.internet) and
 Helen Dry (hdryemunix.emich.edu.internet).)