A similar thing seems to have happened to the Interpedia Project, which
wanted to build a distributed encyclopedia over the Internet, and started
with a mailing list with over hundred messages a day, but which seems to
have evaporated (their home page and FAQ were last updated a year ago)
after the Encyclopedia Britannica came online. By the way, does anybody
know what happened to "ThinkNet", another ambitious cyberphilosophy
project?
PCP's development is perhaps more slow, but seems definitely more stable.
(but what would happen if illness or job loss struck the editorial board?
Stability of the active personnel is definitely the first requirement).
Francis
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Date: Fri, 31 Mar 1995 10:19:44 -0500
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: lsanger@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (ASP-Info)
Subject: My Retirement (please read)
Dear all,
I have enjoyed moderating the lists for the past 9 months or so, and I have
enjoyed working on ASP projects of various sorts. But I am, as the title
indicates, wanting to retire from my role in the ASP. I am just tired of
all the work, and I think that my time could really be better spent in the
real world, as opposed to cyberspace, and in thinking to myself, rather
than out loud to a bunch of other people. I miss my old individualistic,
hermitic (hermetic?) habits. I want to go back to my old ways, the ways of
a compleat intellectual individualist.
I do not want just to close up shop on the lists, though. If anyone were
to take it upon him- or herself to set up replacement lists, and moderate
them or not, I would be very grateful. If worse comes to worse, and no one
wants to do the job I've been doing (or even to set up an unmoderated list)
we may indeed have to close the lists. But I hope some caring and/or
ambitious soul will set up the list. If you have the e-mail program
Eudora, by the way, I can send you *detailed* instructions on how to set up
the list.
By the way, this general transference-of-power includes the member
directory. If anyone wants to be Keeper of the Directory, you better speak
up now, or there will be no directory in the future. I will send you the
relevant materials. Actually, some of you already have the relevant
materials.
But since I have already committed myself to the JASP, I will be the editor
of at least one issue, *if* people do in fact meet the deadlines and there
are commentaries on the articles submitted. Since, as Mike has complained
to me privately, people seem quite lazy about the whole thing (which is to
be expected from a group of intellectual individualists, if you think about
it), I will be enormously surprised if people meet the deadlines. And so I
doubt I will be editor of even one issue.
*But if* people want me to (write me if so!), I *will* put together a
journal containing what we have, whether there are commentaries on
particular articles or not. I will do this because, as I said, I have
committed myself to putting the journal together. And if, miraculously,
such a journal should turn out very well and lots of people want to get in
on the act, in various ways, I will be all too happy to pass the editorial
reins to any qualified individual (most grad students would qualify, I
imagine) who wants to take them over.
Please don't be too angry or disappointed with me. It is hardly that I do
not like you all. I do -- I think this is a very fine and interesting
bunch of philosophers. It has nothing to do with you.
Regards,
Larry