Review of INDOLOGY (II of III)

[Dr. Dominik Wujastyk]

Part II (of III)
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continued...


With the 20-20 vision of hindsight, it is obvious that the original VHP
posting was of interest to many members of INDOLOGY, and was--in
itself--certainly an appropriate item for the group.  However, with the same
hindsight it is clear that much of the subsequent debate was unnecessarily
unpleasant in tone, far too voluminous, and inappropriate for the INDOLOGY
group.

Everyone who joins INDOLOGY automatically gets sent a short bit of blurb
about the aims of the group, which I wrote in 1990.  It begins:

     INDOLOGY (Indology discussion list) is chiefly aimed at academics
     interested in the study of classical India. The group might be expected
     to discuss topics such as the history of linguistics, Indo-european
     philology and grammar, issues of character set encoding, the location
     of citations, and the exchange of e-texts. 

I have since clarified and beefed up my standard statement about the
group, which I send personally to people who enquire about joining, and
the newer version will soon become part of the automatic message that is
sent out.  The main points of the "mission statement" of INDOLOGY are
 
1/ it is meant to cover indology in a broadly-conceived way, i.e., including
   not just Sanskrit studies, but MIA and NIA, as well as Tibetan, Sinhalese,
   Dravidian and other languages of the region, together with their
   literatures, cultures and so forth (although some of these topics
   will have their own lists for more detailed work);
2/ the word "indology" certainly carries connotations of ancient and
   classical studies;
3/ it is aimed at academics, i.e., professionals in the field of
   indology, or in related fields.  It is aimed at people who are, for
   instance, current with with the professional journals, or who attend some
   of the main academic conferences.  People who  have read and continue
   to read the professional literature of "indology", and participate in the
   field.

Now I don't wish the group to be exclusive, and it isn't.  Of course
anyone is welcome to join.  And many people have:  I was astounded to
see that on the 5th Jan there were 337 members!  There just are not 337
lectureships in Sanskrit, Buddhism, Tibetan, Tamil, Hinduism, etc. in
the world, so INDOLOGY obviously has a number of honoured guests.  This
is a very large membership for such a specialized subject area, and it
is rather flattering.  But what does this do to the group? Should it be
"handled" in some way?  Need anything be done?

Bigger is different.  Plainly, one of the side-effects of INDOLOGY's
success in attracting a larger membership is the type of heated
discussion we have seen this year: one in August, and one in November.
If I try to describe these discussions in much more detail I'll only
offend somebody, and start yet another flame war, so I won't begin.
Many of the longest contributions to the debates were characterized by
unpleasant attacks of an unnecessarily insulting tone, coupled with
heated language and what can only be described as a sense of hatred.
Several people in INDOLOGY didn't like the experience of these
discussions; some resigned or tried to.

Richard Hayes posted a very useful message on 7 Nov, when the VHP debate
was peaking, outlining the main editorial options technically available,
including a closed membership and editorial control through making the
list "mediated".  The plain fact is, I don't have time or inclination to
edit or mediate INDOLOGY.  But perhaps something has to be done to keep
INDOLOGY on the rails, now that the membership is so large.

I'm continuing to think hard about the options.  One that appeals to me
is for individual members to set up filters using their own email
software, so that they only get to see postings that interest them.  I
am currently using an email program called Elm, which is pretty popular,
and it comes with a utility program called "filter" which you can use to
control what happens to incoming email, according to flexible criteria.
As the "infoglut" grows, we are all going to need mechanisms like this
as a matter of necessity, and most people writing email software today
are putting this sort of feature into their products.  This way, we can
all fine-tune what we see exactly to our liking.  It sounds ideal.  But
at present, this sort of option is too fiddly and technical to be used
easily, and is not available in everyone's software.  So I don't think
this is a real solution now: perhaps in a couple of years.

The simplest filter, of course, is the finger on the "D" button.


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to be continued ...