[INDOLOGY] mea culpa and Dominik's contribution

Fri Apr 5 18:20:14 UTC 2019

I would like to add my thanks to Dominik for footing the bill that makes
this list run.

While I too feel the right thing to do is to contribute to that bill, I
also worry that even a voluntary monetary contribution could lead to issues
of disparity and a feeling of ownership by some members that could lead to
more conflict about what we should and should not discuss within the forum.

On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 11:22 AM Herman Tull via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> As do I (wish to contribute).
>
> Herman Tull
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 6:19 PM Krishnaprasad G via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
>> Dear Dominik Wujastyk
>> I second the opinions about bearing the expenses.
>> KP
>>
>> On Fri 5 Apr, 2019, 9:40 PM Camillo Formigatti via INDOLOGY, <
>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Dominik,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Still, I’d be happy to help with the expenses too.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Camillo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>
>>> *Sent:* 05 April 2019 15:50
>>> *To:* Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh at umich.edu>
>>> *Cc:* Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com>; Indology <
>>> indology at list.indology.info>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [INDOLOGY] mea culpa and Dominik's contribution
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Madhav and Jonathan, it's kind of you to offer, and I imagine many
>>> other people would be equally willing to contribute if I put a big Patreon
>>> button on the website.  Over the years and with the help of various
>>> committees membersI have thought about different business models for the
>>> list. I don't know if you remember, but at one time I tried to run a little
>>> Amazon bookshop on the website, with curated indological titles.  I would
>>> have got a fraction of a cent for each Amazon sale through that channel.
>>> But it didn't meet a real need and wasn't used.  At another time I had some
>>> website pages at indology.info that listed publishers.  Charging for
>>> that would have been a more obvious way of getting some income, but I never
>>> wanted the entanglement with billing, correspondence, tax, etc.  So that
>>> was always a free service to publishers and eventually I decided just not
>>> to do it.  Another obvious model would be to bring the forum into H-Asia,
>>> and we nearly did that, some years back.  However, H-Asia imposes some
>>> limits on what a member-list can do, including having to pay to post job
>>> advertisements, and we didn't want those kinds of stricture.  Another model
>>> would be to use a university-hosted Mailman installation.  After all,
>>> INDOLOGY enjoyed the generous and free support of the U. of Liverpool for
>>> many years when it first started.  But I have moved around different
>>> institutions in my career, and my experience has been that universities
>>> have short memories where digital support is concerned.  You set something
>>> up, and then five years later you get sharp emails from the service admins
>>> saying that they are going to pull the plug.  UCL was very bad when I left,
>>> deleting my files without notice.  Vienna has been better, that way.  I
>>> think I was traumatized by the whole BlackBox affair in the mid-90s, when
>>> the U. of Washington summarily deleted all the marvellous indological
>>> materials that had been made public for years by Tom Ridgeway[*
>>> <http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.indology.info/1997-July/008892.html>].
>>> Since then, I've never really trusted university computing departments to
>>> have a long view.  University libraries are institutionally concerned with
>>> long-term preservation, but libraries curate static data, not functioning
>>> services.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So I arrived at the counter-intuitive position that running the website
>>> and Mailman as a private individual was likely to provide a more stable and
>>> long-lasting environment than working with a university.   It is also the
>>> path of least resistance to just keep the service afloat and not to bother
>>> myself or others with all the complications of collecting money.  This
>>> takes the least number of brain cycles for me, and leaves me most free to
>>> actually do the things I love, including indology.  I'm now a bit sorry I
>>> mentioned it publicly, but I was writing hastily and in a spirit of full
>>> disclosure.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Something that I failed to mention in my response about how the
>>> committee works is that we have a weekly rota.  I think everyone knows
>>> this, but members of the committee take weekly turns being on duty.  So at
>>> any one time, only one of the committee members deals with correspondence
>>> or other tasks (but we all vote on issues and applications all the time).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks again!
>>>
>>> Dominik
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 at 07:14, Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <
>>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Dominik,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      My reaction is similar to Jonathan's.  I would be willing to
>>> contribute toward the cost of maintaining the Indology list.  Please
>>> consider setting up a way for us to share the cost.  With best wishes,
>>>
>>>
>>> Madhav M. Deshpande
>>>
>>> Professor Emeritus
>>>
>>> Sanskrit and Linguistics
>>>
>>> University of Michigan
>>>
>>> [Residence: Campbell, California]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 5, 2019 at 12:51 AM Jonathan Silk via INDOLOGY <
>>> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Dominik
>>>
>>> I am perhaps not the only member who felt more than a twinge of guilt in
>>> reading that you have been paying for storage out of your pocket. While I
>>> agree that simply repeating previous posts is a very bad idea (I would have
>>> said for reasons of legibility and page space, not storage cost), I would
>>> be more than delighted to contribute to the costs of funding Indology, and
>>> I am sure I am not the only one. Perhaps there is a way (sorry, I know this
>>> is more work for someone!) to make a page where I can make a donation?
>>> Paypal? Or--I'm blushing here--such a page already exists but I don't know
>>> about it?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jonathan
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> J. Silk
>>> Leiden University
>>>
>>> Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
>>>
>>> Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
>>>
>>> 2311 BZ Leiden
>>>
>>> The Netherlands
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> copies of my publications may be found at
>>>
>>> https://leidenuniv.academia.edu/JASilk
>>>
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>>> committee)
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>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> committee)
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>> unsubscribe)
>>
>
>
> --
> Herman Tull
> Princeton, NJ
> _______________________________________________
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>

-- 
Patricia Sauthoff
Post-doctoral researcher
AyurYog.org
Department of History and Classics
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada

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