Dear All,
I would like to warmly suggest/remind the following to all of us (as a friendly
suggestion, on which I will not follow up):
* One can find online good examples for the *"netiquette"* of mailing lists to
reduce problems (see here
<https://www.snort.org/faq/what-is-the-mailing-list-etiquette>, here
<https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_list_netiquette> and here
<https://sites.ualberta.ca/~pletendr/list-net.html> for examples, which can
be useful for all of us).
* Please, let us always remember that there is a *person with feelings * on
the other side of a communication. We need to gently and respectfully handle
cases where we have objections.
* If you feel that a conversation grows too big or is somehow problematic,
address a */personal/**e-mail to a main contributor suggesting nicely an
alternative* you consider more appropriate. If this fails systematically,
then scale it up through a list moderator (or the list itself) politely.
* Specific *suggestions for appropriate digital spaces* that can hold e.g.
long discussions may allow all such discussion to find their own nest after
a given point, so that we all have a common additional resource connected to
the list, for topics that do need the added interaction.
* If you feel that a topic you contribute to really ignites interesting
conversation or if you simply receive an e-mail suggesting you to move a
long conversation elsewhere due to its size, *consider an alternative* (or
even ask the list for one), to facilitate the use of the mailing list
itself.
* Let us remember that what is *uninteresting to us may be interesting to
others*.
As a final comment, before best practices comes *common understanding* and *good
will*. Let us primarily build on these, as we have done in this list for many
years.
Having said the above, I would like to thank Ada (and all the others) for the
contributions (past, current and future) and discussions that keep this list alive.
Best regards,
George G.
P.S. I would also like to thank Gully for trying to keep the list humane.
On 23/8/23 00:53, Gully Burns via Corpora wrote:
Dear all,
I was shocked to see a vitriolic ad-hominem attack on a colleague posted to
this mailing list. It is entirely inappropriate to post this type of diatribe
against an individual even though someone might disagree with either the tone
or the content of an individual's messages or arguments. The fact that other
members of the community chimed in to reinforce the attack is also appalling
and entirely inappropriate.
Sincerely,
Gully Burns
On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 1:23 PM Ada Wan via Corpora <[email protected]>
wrote:
Dear all on the Corpora-List
I understand it is possible that some of you may harbor some negative
sentiments towards me and/or my recent replies on the list.
That having been expressed, I would like to remind everyone on this list
it is important to understand that many subjects such as computational [x,
where x can be e.g. linguistics, biology, physics, modeling...], digital
humanities, data analytics, data science, and many of their dependencies
have been / are in the public domain, much of which academic and
scientific in nature. Science is in the public domain.
What we are experiencing here is sort of a computational and statistical
turn in the computational sciences and studies --- anything that involves
data (computational and otherwise). Previously (or even currently in many
disciplines/practices), one has modeled / has been modeling many symbolic
concepts and values computationally, directly inheriting these from
"traditional sciences" (i.e. sciences from a time when all was done
without any computational machinery), assuming that these values and the
relationship between such would not only hold but also hold as the only
ground truth. But as e.g. my results have shown, many of these scientific
concepts, values, and relationships deserve to be re-evaluated and
re-interpreted.
What I have been trying to do is to communicate this, as without any
updates and/or self-correction, we could be experiencing many
discrepancies in our experimental results. Good scientific practice
(including good assumptions therefor) is fundamental to everyone. This
includes but is not limited to having good assumptions, leveraging
appropriate methods, being responsible in evaluation as well as addressing
ethical concerns, e.g. in the case of my findings: a combination of false
assumptions and miseducation. (Sorry to re-iterate this but it is just
such an important lesson for many on this list... it may be painful for
some too.)
Corpora-list might have changed more or less like how the field of CL/NLP
has in the past decades. While these areas might have become more
generalized and thus the audience more "diverse" in terms of background
and areas of familiarity, there are certainly some on this list who are
concerned about some of the "bad" science/values that could get propagated
through the use of data/corpora. That is one of the reasons behind my many
replies of late.
*
*
*If you should find my comments/replies an issue of concern, please let me
know what in specifics you disagree with. I'd be happy to modify my
formulations or discuss further. If you think I have been wrong somewhere,
please do let me know. I'd be happy to update.
*
Thanks and best
Ada
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 5:39 PM Ada Wan <[email protected]> wrote:
Amendment:
In short, there are no symbolic concepts relevant in computing /
computational processing except for those which also align with
statistics. (There are various levels of assumptions/abstractions that
could be relevant depending on the goals/tasks. But much of what one
might have been doing in "symbolic computing" surely deserves a
critical re-examination.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 4:48 PM Ada Wan <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Ben, Rodolfo, and Toms
Please accept that there is a responsibility to science,
technology, engineering, and education (or anything that we
undertake).
If you could point out the specific arguments as to which of what
I wrote may be problematic to you, perhaps we can have a
constructive exchange. The way in which you three expressed your
sentiments on this thread can be interpreted as mobbing.
Please note the intent behind my statement and lend me the benefit
of a doubt as to why I would have invested my time and energy to
write the reply that I did to the list:
"As language sciences (e.g. Linguistics) and NLP are still taught
at some universities, i.e. part of publicly accessible education,
there is a general responsibility that one should bear when
promoting/hosting events that would be explicitly/implicitly
supporting biases and/or in violation of scientific integrity."
This applies to the whole area of computing, including digital
humanities and the computational social sciences.*In short, there
are no symbolic concepts relevant in computing / computational
processing.* I am sorry if that has not been clear.
I understand that there are members in the CL/NLP
community/communities who might be interested in (or used/addicted
to) "word" hacking. But it is now high time to stop.
@Ben: Please note that I am not doing this "for fun". I am not
trying to ridicule anyone. My remarks are not ad personam. For
each of the research directions/practices that I commented on,
there are opportunities for all practitioners to do a better job,
to refine our analyses.
Thanks and best
Ada
On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 9:45 AM Toms Bergmanis via Corpora
<[email protected]> wrote:
Can’t agree more.
Toms
*From:* Rodolfo Delmonte via Corpora <[email protected]>
*Sent:* Monday, August 21, 2023 10:06 AM
*To:* Ben Sir <[email protected]>
*Cc:* corpora <[email protected]>
*Subject:* [Corpora-List] Re: RANLP 2023 Call for Participation
Fully agree with you Ben.
Rodolfo
Il lun 21 ago 2023, 01:00 Ben Sir via Corpora
<[email protected]> ha scritto:
Hi Ada,
It's understandable that enthusiasm can sometimes lead to
excessive engagement, but your disruptive posting on the
mailing list has reached an intolerable level. Please keep
your conversations private instead of spamming everyone
and curb your enthusiasm. Your obnoxious behavior reflects
poorly on you.
Thanks.
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and
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