d . garcia on Mon, 15 May 2023 17:44:52 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> a note about nettime


Thanks Ted,
It's good to get some clarification and a bit of detail about the issues going on behind the scenes. Its also great to see so many eloquent defences of the list and the list form in general in these bad times.

Not to mention so much sincere appreciation for decades of work by moderators, visible, and invisible. I am not keen on the term 'janitor'. You and Felix are still clearly in charge and rightly so as you are both widely respected.

I am happy to follow the advice to be patient, as those behind the scenes work to identify a way forward. But I have to say that recent discussions have felt a bit weird, rather opaque and to be honest somewhat manipulative. Its felt analogous to a teenage spat with endless - "on again off again" teasing - sprinkled with dark unspecified hints of bad faith, implied by terms by terms like "first mover advantage". This all feels a bit peculiar in the face of so many apparently open generous offers of support. I could be being naive but sometimes its good to take things at face value. Maybe you think (like Bismark) that the back room discussions and decisions are like sausages "best we don't know too much about how they are made." On the other hand maybe there's a better way of dealing with each other ?


On 2023-05-15 06:03, Ted Byfield wrote:
Hi, all —

It's always great to see support for the list. That support has
had a slightly paradoxical quality for many years now — for
example, as Felix hinted, in paeans that have welled up in the
past when he and I have made "nottime" posts about shutting down
the list as a way to prompt discussions about its flaws. Here we
are again, but with an important difference: the list didn't exist
for several weeks — and since it's been resurrected, it's still
had issues with mail delivery. Any discussion of the list's future
is compromised because something like a third of the list may not
be seeing these discussions. That includes me — I've had to read
these threads in the archive, and I'm not even sure this mail will
be delivered to anyone. 😹

Felix and I have been moderating and adminning nettime (with the
help of many others who've rarely received the credit they
deserve) for twenty-five years now — a bit longer than the eight
years Menno acknowledged. However people feel about our various
contributions to the list on many levels, I think it's fair to
say that people have, at least in effect, trusted our judgment.

The Kein server crash has been challenging for many people and
communities, not just nettime. For some it was a real emergency;
but nettime has often been quiet for long periods, and since we
received vanishingly few inquiries about the list while it was
down, the list's needs seemed much less pressing. This is a subtle
but important point: nettime is just one facet of larger network
of communities, and we decided to slow-walk the process of
recovering the list as a way to *support* those others who were
facing more serious problems. The fact that this discussion is
happening at all clearly means this isn't an emergency at all.

There's no clear process for resolving nettime's future, but in
my view that's good: it's an opportunity for the community as a
whole to collectively deliberate the path forward. That'll take
time, and it may be difficult, but that's as it should be. So,
please, if you have ideas, hopes, concerns, proposals, anything,
please share them — that's how this discussion will happen. But
also understand that, just as Felix and I (and, again, the others
who've kept things going, would *never* capriciously shut down
the list capriciously, nor will we fall back on a first-mover
advantage model.

So: please be patient for a bit longer while we sort out the mail
delivery problems.

Cheers,
Ted
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On 2023-05-15 06:03, Ted Byfield wrote:
Hi, all —

It's always great to see support for the list. That support has
had a slightly paradoxical quality for many years now — for
example, as Felix hinted, in paeans that have welled up in the
past when he and I have made "nottime" posts about shutting down
the list as a way to prompt discussions about its flaws. Here we
are again, but with an important difference: the list didn't exist
for several weeks — and since it's been resurrected, it's still
had issues with mail delivery. Any discussion of the list's future
is compromised because something like a third of the list may not
be seeing these discussions. That includes me — I've had to read
these threads in the archive, and I'm not even sure this mail will
be delivered to anyone. 😹

Felix and I have been moderating and adminning nettime (with the
help of many others who've rarely received the credit they
deserve) for twenty-five years now — a bit longer than the eight
years Menno acknowledged. However people feel about our various
contributions to the list on many levels, I think it's fair to
say that people have, at least in effect, trusted our judgment.

The Kein server crash has been challenging for many people and
communities, not just nettime. For some it was a real emergency;
but nettime has often been quiet for long periods, and since we
received vanishingly few inquiries about the list while it was
down, the list's needs seemed much less pressing. This is a subtle
but important point: nettime is just one facet of larger network
of communities, and we decided to slow-walk the process of
recovering the list as a way to *support* those others who were
facing more serious problems. The fact that this discussion is
happening at all clearly means this isn't an emergency at all.

There's no clear process for resolving nettime's future, but in
my view that's good: it's an opportunity for the community as a
whole to collectively deliberate the path forward. That'll take
time, and it may be difficult, but that's as it should be. So,
please, if you have ideas, hopes, concerns, proposals, anything,
please share them — that's how this discussion will happen. But
also understand that, just as Felix and I (and, again, the others
who've kept things going, would *never* capriciously shut down
the list capriciously, nor will we fall back on a first-mover
advantage model.

So: please be patient for a bit longer while we sort out the mail
delivery problems.

Cheers,
Ted
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: https://lists.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: https://lists.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: