[Smt-talk] Pre-announcement of new social online vehicle: SMT-Discuss

[poundie at aol.com]

**Pre-announcement of new social online vehicle: SMT-Discuss**
 
SMT Talk was established almost a quarter century ago. This emaillist remains remarkably resilient, with much of the discussion on a high level. Yet as with all e-lists, SMT Talk is not without its problems.
 
An advantage of an email list is that it allows you to sendminimally vetted posts to everybody on the list. But this also means that ifyou belong to an e-list you must be willing to receive minimally vetted posts fromeverybody who subscribes. This gives an e-list a "one-size-fits-all" character:to belong to the list, you must be willing to have all posts on every subject from every subscriber sent to your email inbox—-there is no middle course.
 
This contrasts with more modern social online vehicles, whichallow subscribers greater choice. Wouldn't it be great if there could be an online forum for music theory discussions where you could follow only those threadsthat interest you, not get daily updates from threads that don't interest you,and have some control over whose postings may be sent to your email inbox?
 
Online lists currently can be set up so to allow subscribers morecontrol over what postings they receive, and in about a month SMT is about to launch its own version of such a list, known as "SMT-Discuss." Each new threadon SMT-Discuss will be announced on SMT-Talk, and then you can choose to haveall or some or none of the subsequent postings from that thread sent to youremail inbox. Or you can skip SMT-Talk entirely, and have an RSS-feed alert youwhen a new SMT-Discuss thread is initiated. If a particular discussion threaddoes not interest you (or if it interests you at first, but you then tire of itand choose to stop receiving email posts from the thread), you can still besent notifications of other new threads that you might find to be morecompelling.
 
We hope to launch SMT-Discuss by late August. Meanwhile, you canlearn a bit more about it on my blog (http://president72.wix.com/smt-president-blog). If you have questions orconcerns, please feel free to contact me.
 
Poundie Burstein
President, Society for Music Theory
president at societymusictheory.org
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