Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 19:36:08 -0600
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: Status Report 3




Since the Second Status Report on Sunday, the Spoon Collective
received the following proposals for mailing lists in marxism space:


* Marxism-Feminism (seems an important topic, one continuously riddled
with issues of dialogue, reconcilation, "assimilation," controversy,
and contradiction)

* PostModern marxism based on recent writings of Derrida and friends

* Marxism and culture.  It would interact with many of spoon's
established lists (Frankfurt school, Bhaktin etc.) without having such an
exclusive or historical basis, hopefully giving space for a genuine
discussion of contemporary marxist cultural thought.

* Marxism and international solidarity.

* Marxism and human nature


Some of those lists have moderators, others don't, and if you are
interested in moderating any of the lists proposed here or previously,
please contact us.


Another important development has been that the spoon collective
drafted an overall vision of the structure of marxism space, which was
sent out on Monday afternoon.  A copy is included below for your
reference.  With this framework in place, the decision was made to
establish the moderated big "lean" list and the unmoderated
general-purpose list as soon as possible, so that the substantive
debates on marxism and marxism2, which were largely interrupted
because of the reorganization, can be resumed.  Afterwards we will
proceed to carefully set up the more specialized lists.



Please review the rules proposed for the "lean" list.  This list is a
compromise in that it gives up some of the spontaneity of
marxism-general, in order to condense as much substance as possible
into the lowest volume feasible.  We hope that this higher discipline
by the contributors pays off in terms of a wider distribution of this
list, in freer access to this list.  Are the rules proposed
appropriate for this purpose?  We have begun the search for the
moderators for this list.  It is an important issue and we will not be
rushed, but we hope that the list will be operational within days.


We are still soliciting list proposals.  Submit them to

marx-administration-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu

--------------------------------------------------------

Here is a repetition of Monday's posting:


[...]  We propose that the marxism space supported by the spoon
collective should have the following three main components:



-  One general-purpose list that is not moderated at all.


-  One broad low-noise list with no subject specialization, for the
   purpose of general discussion of all marxist issues,
   moderated by a team which enforces certain formal rules
   that require the participants to make substantive posts,
   and that prevent individuals from hogging the discussion.  The
   following set of rules might be sufficient:

        (1) Only list members can contribute.

        (2) Every contributor can only make one
        contribution per day to a given thread.  This gives
        everybody a chance to reply to you before you write
        again.

        (3) No contributor can send more than 3 postings
        per day.

        (4) combining threads in the same post is
        forbidden.  I.e. you are not allowed to circumvent
        rule (3) by writing one message which should really
        be two or more messages.

        (5)  Repetition is forbidden.

   These rules are designed yield a high enough
   substance-to-noise ratio that subscribers who have poor
   email access or have to pay for email find it worth
   their time and money to subscribe.  In such a list, it
   will also be feasible for us to have a team of
   translators on call so that people can post in their own
   languages and have their contributions translated within
   48 hours.  Further refinements (indexing the archives by
   key words) etc. may be envisioned in the future. It is
   hoped that such a list will carry a high load of
   substantive debate on a world wide scale.


-  A set of specialized, focused lists for subjects of
   special interests, subjects that might benefit from
   being discussed in a more rescricted environment,
   subjects that interest people who don't want to deal
   with the traffic on the general list, etc.



Hans Ehrbar



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