Constitution and Rules of this List

Dominik Wujastyk ucgadkw at UCL.AC.UK
Thu Jul 12 10:03:56 UTC 2001


The Scope and Guidelines of the INDOLOGY list
11 July 2001

(I) Definitions: INDOLOGY is an internet discussion group whose primary
purpose is to provide a forum for discussion among professional scholars
of classical Indian civilization.  The central focus of the list is the
history and culture of ancient and classical India, from a variety of
disciplinary perspectives, including (but not limited to) anthropology,
archaeology, art history, folklore, history, linguistics, literature and
literary criticism, medicine, musicology, numismatics, philology,
philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, science, and
sociology.

(II) In this context, "India" refers to the greater Indian cultural
region, including primarily the regions of modern political India, Sri
Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma and Nepal and secondarily culturally-
and/or linguistically-related areas, such as Tibet, Bhutan, Central Asia,
Indonesia, and Cambodia.  The predominant focus of discussion is intended
to be cultural aspects of ancient and classical India.  Discussion
relating to developments in India after roughly A.D.  1800, while not
absolutely prohibited, are discouraged.  Such topics are only to be
tolerated insofar as they pertain specifically to advancing research on
ancient and classical India.

(III) Membership: INDOLOGY was created to serve as a medium of
communication between accredited scholars of India who are engaged in
teaching and research at colleges, universities, and research institutes.
Full Membership with posting privileges is therefore restricted to those
holding advanced degrees (M.A., Ph.D., or equivalent), or who are
currently enrolled in an advanced degree program, who either specialize
in, or do a significant portion of their work in classical Indian Studies.
Special exceptions to the advanced degree requirement are occasionally
made in cases where applicants have significant *scholarly* publication
records in Indology.  Affiliation with an academic institution is strongly
preferred, even though individuals who are not formally affiliated with a
university or a similar organization may join provided that their
scholarly commitment can be made plausible to the list-committee through
their CV.


(IV) Non-members: Non-members will be free to read the discussions in the
archive and - technology permitting - to receive daily digests by email.
But they will not be allowed to post messages to the group.  They may,
however, send questions to the committee for possible forwarding to the
group.  A formal procedure for the submission of indological queries will
be established.

(V) Application procedures: Prospective members should compose a concise
message describing their credentials relevant to Indological
studies-including such details as advanced degree(s) held, research
specialty, scholarly (peer- reviewed) publications, memberships in
Indological societies (e.g. AOS, RAS, IASS, etc.).  This should be sent to
the INDOLOGY committee, at an address to be announced, so that the
application can be processed.  Applications will be considered on an
ongoing basis and will be approved by a consensus of the committee
members.

(VI) Rules: Full members will be expected to maintain commonly-accepted
standards of decorum in their postings to the group.  Contributions are
expected to be polite and well-considered.  Members who violate these
standards will be warned and may have their membership privileges
suspended or revoked if the behaviour continues.  In particular, personal
attacks of an ad-hominem nature, rude language, and off-topic postings are
violations of the list rules.  The definition and understanding of what
constitutes improper use of the List shall be a matter for the List
committee.  Members must be familiar with the standard rules of
netiquette, such as those in RFC 1855 (at, e.g.,
http://marketing.tenagra.com/rfc1855.html ).


(VII) Governing Committee:  The Governing Committee shall consist of
between five and ten persons who are Full Members of the List and shall be
chosen by and serve at the discretion of the List Owner.  They shall be
drawn from a diverse geographical areas and shall be active scholars of
Indian Studies.  Committee members will be responsible for the maintenance
and smooth functioning of the list and may be asked to share moderation
duties on an rotating basis.

(VIII) Encouraged forms of communication: Members may start discussions,
ask or answer questions, post announcements of publications, meetings,
conferences or other forms of events characteristic of academia.  Job
announcements are equally welcome.  Announcement of book publications as
well as of new journal issues on the part of their authors or editors is
welcome.  Book catalogues may be linked to the list web-page upon request,
but should not be posted directly to the list.

(IX) Discouraged forms of communications:  List members are discouraged
from posting messages that are not part of a discourse on indology.  In
particular, commercial or advertising messages are strongly deprecated,
and may lead to suspension.  (On the other hand, authors are positively
encouraged to post news of their recent academic publications.)

(X) Technical limitations: Due to the danger of spreading computer
viruses, sending email attachments to the list is forbidden; the same goes
for e-mail messages containing markup (HTML).  In general, it is suggested
that members who would like to inform others of lengthy documents upload
these on a www- site and request that the link thereto be posted on the
INDOLOGY website.  Members should restrict quotes from other messages to
the utmost minimum and not post any messages that exceed two screenfuls of
text (including quotes).

(XI) Privacy: Reference to and quotation from list messages in
publications - print or electronic - is permitted only under the express
permission of the author.


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This document was prepared by the INDOLOGY committee.





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