The overall goal of management of the dinosaur mailing list is the facilitation of communication relevant to dinosaur science. Our desire is to make the list as useful as possible to everyone. Obviously both readers and writers may envision a variety of uses for the list and hold a variety of philosophies on how best to implement such uses. Sometimes these uses and/or implementations conflict.
Since the list has been hosted on academic sites for most of its life, we tend toward resolution of such conflicts by catering toward the uses and implementations of academic scientists. We wish for the list to provide all with reliable and up to date information, and again we feel this is generally (though of course not universally) going to come from those who study dinosaur science for a living. Our efforts to make the list a comfortable home for such individuals can make the DML a forbidding place to others. In general we apologize for that -- the list cannot be all things to all people, and so there have to be some "winners" and "losers" in the resolution of conflicting interests.
That said, we do not in any way apologize for taking actions that we think will make the list better for all but, perhaps, a small minority. To cater to such minorities, we can and will create spin-off lists. We started with the creation of the KilledThreads mailing list. As of this writing that list has largely been taken over (with our blessing) by a group of people interested in creating a fantasy world just like the real world except that there was no end Cretaceous extinction event, and the history of life thus took a dramatically different path from that point (or non-point) forward. However, the list was created for the discussion of any thread that begins on the dinosaur list but that is not welcome because we believe the thread is counter to our main goal of harboring discussions of real dinosaur science.
Another subject that we think distracts from dinosaur science is administration of the DML itself, and so we do our level best to minimize our own intrusions with the subject. We also strongly discourage such discussion either in the abstract or about particular people or incidents. We welcome any and all feedback to us, but not to the DML. In general we keep most discussion of list administration off the list, so you should never presume to know what we have done or will do based only upon public announcements. We are frequently told that we have let people "get away" with things even though the people in question have been disciplined for these things. Please don't mistake public silence for inaction.
Recently, one of our subscribers took issue with my (MPR) actions behind the scenes:
We mulled over various options as to how to treat this issue and ultimately decided that a reality check was in order. Hence the call for a vote. Based on feedback I'd already received from others I had little doubt as to how that vote would turn out, but I chose to go ahead with it for two reasons, 1) to make sure that my certainty was justified -- that others generally agreed that this individual, Ken Kinman, was working against our goals, and 2) to try one last time to get Mr. Kinman to recognize that with his DML participation he was not even succeeding at his own goals (insofar as we understand them).
With respect to the major goal we perceive Mr. Kinman to have -- to gain converts to his peculiar brand of taxonomy -- we would like to share a few brief sentiments. First off, for any who are interested, we have created a mailing list specifically for the topic. That list is probably going to die soon, so subscribe soon and start posting if you want it to live. [Apparently there was no interest in maintaining such a list... it died due to inactivity as I indicated it would, so I have removed the link to it. -- MPR ] Mr. Kinman's home page has apparently died already. The URL I had for it is now broken. You can find a little from (if not about) him at The Eurypterid newsletter [I don't know whether that newsletter moved or got taken off the web. If you find it and would like me to restore the link, let me know. I'm not going to waste any time looking for it myself. I only know that the link I had for it now goes nowhere. -- MPR]. If you really want to find out about his "system" you should try to find a copy of his book (it probably won't be easy):
Author: Kinman, Kenneth E.
Title: The Kinman system : toward a stable cladisto-eclectic
classification of organisms : living and extinct, 48 phyla,
269 classes, 1,719 orders / by Kenneth E. Kinman
Publisher: Hays, Kan. (P.O. Box 1377, Hays 67601) : K.E. Kinman, c1994
Description: 88 p. ; 28 cm
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-69) and index
For our perspective... Many projects in life force you to constantly
ask yourself the question, "should I push harder, or should I give
up?". It's frequently difficult to know; pushing harder may cause you
to realize your dreams which may be just one small push away. On the
other hand, pushing harder can be just a waste of energy that would be
better spent on more profitable pursuits. While we appreciate the
nobility of Mr. Kinman's quest, we feel his approach is doomed to
failure, and he would be better off giving up. In any case, his
efforts to convert DML subscribers to the Kinman System of taxonomy
appear to us to have resulted in nothing more than him alienating any
and all potential converts. He would not hear that message any other
way I attempted to send it, so we tried a vote. We wish him well in
his efforts to gain converts elsewhere. By popular demand he will no
longer be openly seeking converts on the dinosaur mailing list.
This page was created on March 25, 2002.
Broken links addressed June 19, 2003.
More broken links removed September 1, 2005.