AW.: list content and etiquette etc.

The most active lists, unless they are moderated (which raises other
problems), seem all to go through phases of misunderstandings, conflict,
dramatic resignations and the like. The sociology of one of the lists to
which I have subscribed in the past (the Pynchon list) has even become the
subject of journalistic attention.

So the tuning list has had a spell of bad feelings. So what? Although it
would have been better form to have taken the conflict completely off-list,
and to have kept off-list comments private, I think little harm has been done
by this episode.

The more important question that has been raised is that of list content.
There has been a complaint about having "too much math" in postings.

I disagree with this. The topics covered by this list are refreshingly
diverse and that diversity seems to demand a variety of approaches, one of
which has some numerical content. (In fact, the math involved is almost
trivial and as far as I know, only Paul Hahn has produced theoretical items
in the rigorous terms of mathematical proofs). Each of the approaches will
have advantages and shortcomings, each approach will followed more or less
closely by individual readers, and the delete button is always there for the
completely uninterested.

We all have our own disinterests and impatiences: I could care less about
Barbershop, Phish or Wendy Carlos, I found the discussion of putative blues
scales very odd, as are the writings of one contributer who choose to frame
everything in terms of his own autobiography, and I still don't follow why
Paul Erlich needs to use entropy. I'm sure that my own postings are often
the subject of someone's delete button. But the tuning list represents a
rich musical landscape, and I wouldn't want to lose any detail of that
landscape, just because I don't follow it closely.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt

Dan!
I believe I am the only one that made any comment along these lines. My
point was not against math. It is the use of math without any attempt to convey
anything to those not on the same level as them. Chomsky has talked alot about
this use of language. The purpose of specialized languages not for communication
but the setting up of a ELITE.
I caught one post with the words "math" and "superior" in the same sentence that
seemed to imply a certain attitude.
If I don't understand something i just ask. I know of others (via
communcations) on this list who are too intimidated to ask, which is my point.
I fully agree in the fine examples of math appropriateness to this list!

DWolf77309@cs.com wrote:

> The more important question that has been raised is that of list content.
> There has been a complaint about having "too much math" in postings.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com