> > What are your thoughts about a list that solicits contributions in > > order to pay graduate students to help run the list? > > Well, there is work involved and somewhere, somehow somebody is > paying for this work to get done. Perhaps your employer considers > this part of your job and it gets paid for that way. Perhaps it is > done on a volunteer basis outside of work hours. Not everyone wants > to volunteer their time this way. This is the kind of thing that makes me have mixed feelings about it. I treat listowning, as well as most list reading, as a recreational activity -- something I do when other people are doing things like watching tv. Not everybody thinks that way, however. I also would never consider running a moderated list since I personally dislike that style (spurts of delayed, clumped mail). But not everybody thinks that way either. The list I'm talking about is very well respected and very good (even though I delete most of it unread, as I do with all moderated lists). Its survival probably depends on the paid efforts of the student workers. I guess what bothers me is that we've been spoiled by all these free lists everywhere. The next step after soliciting contributions may be paid subscriptions. People pay to receive print journals, so why not pay to receive e-mail lists? As I said in the beginning, I'm not sure what I think about it or exactly why I have these niggling doubts, even though I think about it every time the call for contributions arrives. So far, I haven't contributed. Maybe that's just the selfish thought of why send my money to help run another list when I could use it to pay somebody to do my daily maintenance of gopher, ftp, and www files. But I don't think that's really it. I don't mind taking care of these files. There are other fuzzy doubts floating through my head -- which is why I asked your opinions on it. --Natalie ([log in to unmask])