Hello Bev, List, I have been a member of the Peirce list only for the last couple of years. Here is my understanding of what Ben and Gary R. are trying to do. There are a set of guidelines that were established by the Peirce-list when Joe Ransdall set it up. Gary and Ben have responsibility for serving as official co-managers moderators for the discussion on the list, and Gary is a moderator. The hope is that the members on the list will check themselves when they are thinking about making a post to see if it conforms to the goals and rules established for the list and, when this does not appear to be happening, that others members will provide respectful reminders when things appear to be going off course. When this process of self-moderation by the members isn't working sufficiently well, the official managers and moderator might feel a need to step in and remind people about the ground rules established on the website for the list that we all presumably read when we sent an email asking to join.
Over time, Gary and Ben have watched the membership and the level of activity increase and decrease. There are, of course, different reasons why these changes have may have occurred. Here are two. First, members might hold back from participating or leave because they feel that their activities are being unduly policed-- by other members or by the moderators. Second, members might hold back or leave because they feel that too much of the discussion is off base, or written in a manner that shows no interest or engagement with Peirce's ideas or arguments, or written in a manner that appears to be intentionally destructive, a personal attack, a rant, etc. Many on-line discussion forums and lists are struggling to deal with just these kinds of issues, and it is difficult to see how to solve such problems when they become rampant. My hunch is that Ben and Gary probably try to talk to members offlist when they announce they are leaving. As such, they probably have a much better sense than the rest of the members of the list when things are going awry for the first or the second of the reasons listed above. As such, it might behoove all of us to work from the assumption that they are making judgment calls about when the list is not functioning well for one reason or another, and about when it is appropriate for them to step in to provide reminders, and about how they should handle cases where members repeatedly disregard the aims and the rules for the list. My hope is that all of this is rather obvious to everyone. Given the posts that I see some people making some of the time, it does not appear that this is the case. My own attitude is that I need to give Ben and Gary room to do their work--and the benefit of the doubt when they do feel a need to step in as managers or moderators for the discussion. --Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Bev Corwin [[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2015 3:27 PM To: Benjamin Udell Cc: Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] More on applying theory - culture, projection Sorry Ben, I disagree and sounds like an over reaction to Sung's comments. He isn't trying to emulate anything to a T anymore than you are trying to force discussions of Peirce into a technocracy. He is just pointing out something important about Peirce. Why over react? Sincerely, Bev On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Sung, all, Your post implies that we should emulate Peirce to a T but we can't emulate Peirce to a T because we aren't Peirce. PEIRCE-L is for Peirce-related discussion. Peirce himself was not focused on 'Peirce-related' discussion. Instead those who carry on prolonged, multi-post discussions of a given topic should clarify and thematize the topic's relation to Peirce because that is what is promised to subscribers and that is what most subscribers expect. That has been and will continue to be the policy of peirce-l. Best, Ben Udell as co-manager, peirce-l. On 7/2/2015 5:42 PM, Sungchul Ji wrote: Bev, Gary, lists, I agree with Bev, because Peirce's whole career was devoted to the study of signs and "Peirce-related" is thus "sign-related", it seems to me. Besides, as I learned it from Peirce, we THINK, WRITE, and SPEAK in SIGNS, and hence whatever we post on these lists should be regarded as Peirce-related in one way or another, including linguistic texts, chemical equations, mathematical formulas, network diagrams, pictures, and whatever else that may emerge in the future as NEW means of communication and representation through the Internet. In other words, for me, semiotics is not yet closed. Its future should not be confined to studying MACRO-SEMIOTICS as constructed by Poinsot, Peirce, and others but should be open to studying both MICRO-SEMIOTICS as currently being developed in biosemiotics (.e.g., DNA as a molecular sign) and what may be called 'COSMO-SEMIOTICS' as may be developed in the future (e.g., viewing spiral galaxies as cosmological signs). Imagine what fantastic syntheses in philosophy Pierce's genius might be accomplishing now were he alive today ! All the best. Sung On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 1:10 PM, Bev Corwin <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I enjoy all of the discussions and would prefer more broad than restrictive frameworks. I consider restricting discussions as more technocratic tactic / approach and not Perice related in style. Bev ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
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