Hi Brian, Hilmar, and everyone on the list Thanks for calling this out. I knew our course messages showed up now and then, but I didn’t realize they’d grown to ~80% of list traffic—yikes. That’s on us.
After a quick chat internally, and of course depending on everyone's preference, there are a few quick things that Instats can do right away: 1) Pause our posts: Instats won’t send anything else to r‑sig‑phylo until folks here figure out new rules (or decide you don’t want our seminar emails at all). 2)Pitch in on a fix: If people want a spin‑off list—say "r‑sig‑courses"—we’re happy to help set it up or host it. Or, if a monthly digest feels lighter, we’ll go that route instead. 3)Tag & filter: If the group ends up allowing limited promos, we can add a subject tag like "[Course]" so it’s easy to filter. This is obviously simple and individualized, but it could help. We’ll follow whatever the community decides—even if that’s "no more Instats posts, period." Our whole point is to support researchers, not drive them off the list. Feel free to shoot me ideas off‑list or keep the conversation going here of course. Best wishes Michael Zyphur Professor and Director Institute for Statistical and Data Science *instats.org <http://instats.org>* Follow Instats: Bluesky <https://bsky.app/profile/instats.bsky.social> Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/company/81837504/admin/dashboard/> Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/InstatsTraining/> On Tue, 29 Jul 2025 at 21:18, Brian O'Meara <[email protected]> wrote: > R-sig-phylo was once a place to discuss phylogenetics in R. > > It’s now a place to get ads from Physalia, PR Statistics, Transmitting > Science, and Instats about courses and seminars they are offering (most > paid, though not all). Some of the ads are relevant for using R in > phylogenetics; many are not. But the listserv is now over 78% ads from > these four organizations (more stats at > https://brianomeara.info/posts/rsig/); only 4% of the most recent threads > were about actual questions on using R for phylogenetics. It’s even worse > in other listservs; in June, 2025, ALL 28 threads in the r-sig-ecology > listserv were announcements of this sort ( > https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-ecology/2025-June/thread.html), so > this is definitely a strategy these organizations have chosen to adopt. > > There IS interest and value in a lot of the advertised courses, but it’s a > different interest – in the same way R in finance could be important but > only marginally overlaps with phylogenetics, so it would not be great if > the vast majority of r-sig-phylo posts were about day trading. Perhaps it > is time for these organizations to create an r-sig-courses or similar > listserv, or use one of the many tools available for running a mailing list > dedicated to potential customers of their organizations. > > We’re living in an era where a lot of online forums are potentially going > to be full of AI-generated inauthentic comments; a working email forum > could be valuable as a place for humans to talk to other humans, as this > one has been in the past. That’s not going to be possible if people flee > because it is now used as a marketing list. > > Hilmar Lapp, our very long-serving, volunteer, list moderator, posted > something similar months ago ( > https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg06067.html ) > with some generous guidelines that allow some posting (most of the orgs > have still posted in excess of this). Like him, I do see cases where a > course posting could be relevant, so I’m reluctant to say we should ban all > course announcements, but I think it could be worth having a rule like this > at this point. Though maybe the organizations involved could try to listen > to a plea from the community and choose to stop instead of putting yet more > work on our mod. > > Thanks, > Brian > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > _______________________________________________ > R-sig-phylo mailing list - [email protected] > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo > Searchable archive at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] _______________________________________________ R-sig-phylo mailing list - [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
