On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 10:16 AM, Dan Brickley <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've every confidence in Steven's ability to moderate here, in his > energy, enthusiasm and contribution to the cause. We have a lot to be > grateful for. > > Reading this thread, it does seem that editorial-style annotations on > postings are better handled separately. Spam-filtering, editorialising, > and leading/steering of discussions are separable tasks. Excerpting, > summarising and commenting on posts would perhaps work better in a blog, > rather than as part of the function of email filtering/forwarding. I appreciate the vote of confidence as well as the suggestion, butlet me clarify two important points. I hope this will help resolve some misunderstandings: (1) My role as moderator, filtering out spam, off-topic discussion and ad-hominem postings to the AmSci Forum is *completely independent* of my role as poster to the AmSci and the other Fora in which I post text of my own and quote/comment other postings. The two have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. As a poster, I have the same rights as any other poster: to post on-topic, non-ad-hominem text, including quote/commentary and summaries. These postings are not made, or portrayed, or intended to have any special authority (other than what their own substance may win them) simply because I also happen to be the moderator of the AmSci Forum. Except when specifically tagged as "Moderator's Note" (usually when I am making an announcement or invoking cloture on a topic that has become too repetitive), my postings are simply postings, like any other postings. (2) When I do quote/commentary on AmSci Forum postings, those are *always* postings that have first appeared in full in the Forum. It is simply not the case that I quote/comment AmSci postings without first letting them appear in full on AmSci. However, I do sometimes do *cross-postings* of quote/commentary on postings that have appeared in full on *other* lists (such as SOAF, liblicense, JISC-REPOSITORIES or SIGMET). I think it is those cross-postings that have given some readers the erroneous impression that I sometimes do quote/commentary without first posting the full text on AmSci: I do, but never on *AmSci* postings. When I cross-post, I do so because I feel that my quote/commentary is relevant to AmSci, self-contained, and does not require having seen the full text I am critiquing in order to be fully understood the quote/commentary. However, it is always possible to go to the original list and read the original full-text posting, if a reader is interested. It is also possible to skip quote/commentaries, if one is not interested in them. I have been doing these quote/commentaries since the very beginning of the Forum, in 1998 (and much earlier, on other lists). Moreover, it is my belief that quote/commentary is an important new form of scholarly/scientific discourse, and will come into its own after OA itself has first come into its own. I appreciate the votes of confidence in my role as moderator, but the recommendations about my quote/commentaries are not relevant to the role of moderator. I quote/comment on other lists in *exactly* the same way I do in the AmSci Forum. Those quote/commentaries will have to be weighed on their own merits; they have nothing to do with the question of moderatorship. If someone has incorrectly inferred that my quote/commentaries on the AmSci Forum have some especial editorial force or function, this is simply an error. They do not. They stand or fall on their own intrinsic substance and have no ex officio status at all. > Moving such activities to a blog could also serve to better spread ideas > and discussion beyond the confines of this list. If a more collective > voice is preferred, it wouldn't be too hard to set up a "Planet" blog > aggregator that included posts from any list participants. I do have a blog, "Open Access Archivangelism,"http://openaccess.eprints.org/ and I do cross-post some of my AmSci postings there and vice versa, but blogs are better suited for straight postings ("editorializing") and not for the interactive quote/commentary that is the (potential) power of discussion fora. Harnad, S. (1990) Scholarly Skywriting and the Prepublication Continuum of Scientific Inquiry Psychological Science 1: 342 - 343 (reprinted in Current Contents 45: 9-13, November 11 1991). http://cogprints.org/1581/ Harnad, S. (1992) Interactive Publication: Extending American Physical Society's Discipline-Specific Model for Electronic Publishing. Serials Review, Special Issue on Economics Models for Electronic Publishing, pp. 58 - 61. http://cogprints.org/1688/ Harnad, S. (1995) Interactive Cognition: Exploring the Potential of Electronic Quote/Commenting. In: B. Gorayska & J.L. Mey (Eds.) Cognitive Technology: In Search of a Humane Interface. Elsevier. Pp. 397-414. http://cogprints.org/1599/ Harnad, S. (2003/2004) Back to the Oral Tradition Through Skywriting at the Speed of Thought. Interdisciplines. Retour a la tradition orale: ecrire dans le ciel a la vitesse de la pensee. Dans: Salaun, Jean-Michel & Vendendorpe, Christian (dir). Le deis de la publication sur le web: hyperlectures, cybertextes et meta-editions. Presses de l'enssib. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7723/ Stevan Harnad
