My New Lists on Yahoo! Groups
For several years now, those of you who follow indonesian-studies list have had to endure my non-insular view of the field. That is, it should not just be interdisciplinary but also touch on (at least) several other specific subjects. In yet another experiment, I set up a few days ago five new lists on Yahoo! Groups on precisely these specific subjects. So those of you with less expansive views of Indonesian studies will no longer see so many ‘extraneous’ postings on indonesian-studies. Instead, you can read them in their ‘proper’ places. To wit, for those interested, there now exist
southeast-asian-studies
east-timor-studies
islamic-world-studies
american-society-studies
internet-studies
and any of you are welcome to join.
This is the first public announcement of their existence. I have also put links to them in the right sidebar under Nice Lists. Well, they may indeed turn out to be ‘nice’ lists but in truth that remains to be seen. The types of postings will be similar to those in indonesian-studies, i.e., scholarly documentation, major news developments, alternative viewpoints, and special resources. I do not expect memberships to be large, but having these particular lists with the particular postings selected will make it easier to join (especially with me) in collaborative research projects and papers, using tools like wikis.
Basically, I use as postings selections from materials I scan everyday. So sending some prime choices doesn’t involve all that much extra work, especially since in most postings I simply provide the URL for the source. I would not even have considered trying to do new lists had not Yahoo! recently made very substantial improvements to its email and list configuration options. Email is now much faster, so is display on the lists’ homepages, and spam control is tight. I have selected the same configuration for all the lists (and brought indonesian-studies into the new pattern, too).
The key parts of the new lists’ configuration are these –
- anyone can read postings freely on the web, even if not a list member,
- only those joining as list members can send me materials for possible posting,
- all such postings should be emailed to me at johnmacdougall@comcast.net,
- the lists are unmoderated but only the moderator/s can post (a great timesaver),
- signing up as a list member occurs immediately, and anyone can join.
