Good news for nostalgic Tango-L fans. The Tango-L list will continue, at least for the time being.
You may recall that the whole issue of closing the lists came to a head a couple of months ago, when the administrators of the hosting service at MIT contacted me, pointing out (quite legitimately) that there were essentially zero (actually one ...) current MIT students or staff on the list (at least with an mit.edu email address). Since I had been considering closing the lists for a couple of years anyway owing to low traffic, I proceeded to do the surveys a couple of months ago and found, to my surprise, that there were more people who wanted the lists around than I thought (even though most of those people didn't seem willing to contribute posts to the list). So as a first step, Tango-A was closed as a separate list (and incorporated into Tango-L) since that was a no-brainer given the low volume. And now the MIT administrators have just confirmed that they are essentially "willing to look the other way" (more or less indefinitely) on the continued presence of Tango-L on their servers, so we just got a sort-of "lifetime" free pass. So even though I'm still not convinced that the volume of posts justifies its continued existence, it's certainly easier leaving well enough alone than it is porting the list to a different host. So that's why the list will stick around for the time being. At any rate, several good things came out of this exercise. To name a couple: - I actually got inspired to do the long-overdue comprehensive archival project for both Tango-A and Tango-L (which was enough work that I never found the time earlier to get started on it). The Tango-A archives are in place (even though the list is closed) and Tango-L will soon be (with some posts dating from 1991!). (The previous archives for those lists have long since gone off-line and none was really complete anyway.) - There was a spurt of activity on Tango-L as a result, which seems to be continuing for now, though at a low level by a small subset of members (a far cry from the 20+ posts per day in its heyday). But the renewed activity, such as it is, has not been accompanied by any meaningful volume of new subscribers, so it's not like it has really taken off again either. Q&A --- Q. So what's the role of Tango-L now? A. Well, it's never going to have the importance it did in the early days of the Internet when it was the only means for electronic communication across the global Tango community. But it is still a very particular asset in that a lot of the Tango pioneers who have seen the evolution of Tango over more than a decade are still members of the list, and there is probably no other place where so many of them are represented. Of course, none of this does any good if there is minimal participation, so I'd encourage them and everyone else to post, and especially to encourage new members to subscribe (and post). Q. What does "for the time being" mean? How long is that in days/months/years? A. It means until something happens to bring up again the issue of its continued existence. I'd guess that wouldn't happen before a year anyway, but if there are an insignificant number of posts during that time, it may not be much longer than that. It's ultimately in the hands of the list members. Q. I'd like to post but I'm afraid of my opinions being belittled or being flamed, or being scolded by the moderator for breaking some rule, etc. A. Well, try it and see. Since the volume is low, I have more time to moderate the list. There is a zero-tolerance policy on flaming which WILL be enforced, and there won't be much more leeway on obvious general rudeness and social-misfit type of behaviour either. (Of course, if you're concerned about your opinions being disagreed with, I can't help you there--that's really the essence of a discussion list, isn't it?) As always, new members and so forth do get more latitude, as do innocent errors. If you think all this is a good thing, go ahead and post something. (If you don't, see the next Q&A for unsubsription instructions. :-)) Q. I don't get it. On the one hand you are saying that there needs to be more posts, but on the other hand you're emphasizing adherence to rules? Isn't something better than nothing, even if it is the occasional flame or rude posting (beggars can't be choosers, after all)? A. Not in my book. I have no vested interest in the continuation of the list "no matter what," and therefore have no interest in preserving or being associated with maintaining a "low-end" list. And really it's just the flaming/rudeness rules that are strictly enforced--the rest are more common-sense guidelines that need the occasional reminder, although I admit that very few Twitter-like or Facebook-status-update-like posts (i.e., 1-liners) get through either ... Q. Regarding the "some posts dating from 1991" in the soon-to-be-online Tango-L archives: How can you have a post from 1991 in the Tango-L archives if Tango-L only came into existence in late 1994? A. There was a Ballroom list that was in existence before the Tango-L list and I've included a handful (41, to be precise) of Argentine-Tango related posts on that list between 1991 and 1994 into the upcoming Tango-L archives. Q. (Any procedural question like how to subscribe/unsubscribe, how to access the archives, posting rules, "why didn't my post go through," "why am I not received mail from the list," etc.) A. Go to www.tango-L.com where these are all well documented and essentially pretty accurante, notwithstanding that some minor maintenance needs to be done on some of the pages to get them uptodate. Shahrukh Merchant Tango-L (and ex-Tango-A) administrator tango-l-ow...@mit.edu _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l