Re: tuning archives

Hi there,

Maybe it woud be possible to do a complete archive of tuning
math? That's more of an academic / scholarly list.

But even then - it might scare off non scholarly types
from contributing if they knew their posts would
be archived and they were uncomfortable with
that notion. There is that to bear in mind too.
You might find that even in tuning-math there
may be a few posters who wouldn't want
their posts archived.

I think the thing is that scholars are so used to
publishing or at least to attempts to do so that
they automatically present their ideas in
a suitable format. Look at Margo Schulter's
posts for instance - most of them could
be published just as they are in a
journal if there was one devoted to medieval
tuning theory. So naturally people who write
like that are happy for their posts to be
reproduced in the archive.

One thing about the scholarly posts is
that normally if you have enough background
in the subject, then everything is clear
because the ground rules for ways of presenting
such things have been worked out over centuries,
and you don't need to ask many questions
to understand what it all means.
Well not always as I know from my own
attempts on occasion, but at least
there is good potential for doing so.
Pick up an academic paper fifty years
after it was written, and you have
a reasonable chance of understanding
what it is all about.

But others write in a different way,
and their posts are more in the way of
ephemeral comments. Maybe for instance
they just aren't particularly trained
in presenting their ideas in a scholarly
fashion, and their posts are directed
at the particular people they are communicating
with rather than to a more general audience.

If you read posts of this nature from
fifty years ago you mightn't have a clue
what they are about. You might guess
and put forward many ideas but they
might all be wrong.

They say things that they believe
the people they are conversing with at that
moment will take as intended. Even if
they don't it doesn't matter so much,
just a matter of some frustration that
the communication didn't work and they
can try again until they communicate
what was intended.

But if their posts then get
archived and read over and over again
by other people who weren't the
original intended readers, they
may read anything into them and there
is no-one around to correct them
if they come to other conclusions
from those intended for the views
expressed. The posts simply
weren't intended to be read
by anyone except those involved
in the discussion at the time
it was posted.

Also you can just feel more relaxed
even in maths if you know what you
say is taken as ephemeral in nature
- it is okay to quote someones paper
or theorem - but
is it okay to quote the
formula that they wrote on
a blackboard that maybe had
a few hastily written slips in
it - or the formulae that they
wrote out on a coffee table
to explain an idea to you?
I.e. just as written.
E.g.that example of a formula
using pi in two different ways
- you would probably be over
stepping the mark of what is
acceptable to quote his
result in a paper, with that
formula in just that form
e.g. with a reference in the paper:
"Formula as presented on blackboard
by xxx".

The problem with the internet
is that things aren#t really ephemeral
any more unless you can make
sure they get deleted
after a time out or something.

Probably if one was able to put a
time out on yahoogroups messages so that
they would get deleted automatically
within a month of posting, quite
a few of the posters might actually
opt to do that for all their
messages. So by leaving out
their posts, one is letting
ttheir posts be taken that
way as they intend them.

The ones that get left in are likely
to be the ones that are easier
to understand if you come across them
in a random access type search
anyway.

Collaborations between posters
with good ideas who aren't able to
express them in academic format
and other posters with academic
training may be a possible
way to proceed sometimes
if one wants those ideas to
be made more accessible to
more people.

Robert