[Tango-L] ADMIN: Tango-L will continue!

[Shahrukh Merchant]

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-owner at mit.edu