Updates to PMJS Terms of Use and Management
Paula R. Curtis
Dear all,
I hope this email finds you well in this busy time of year. I write with several updates regarding PMJS management. Our Moderation Team and Steering Committee members have been kind enough to lend their time and expertise over the last several weeks to various matters pertaining to the list.
Moderation Team
We would like to announce that we will be welcoming two new moderators to the Moderation Team: Kurtis Hanlon (Palacký University) and Pia Jolliffe (University of Oxford). David Eason and Nadia Kanagawa will continue to serve as moderators. Christina Laffin and Hanna McGaughey will be stepping down, and we are very grateful for the time they’ve committed to assist with moderation in recent years.
As always, when raising issues with the Moderation Team related to posting, we ask that you use the Moderation Team email (mod...@pmjs.org), rather than emailing moderators individually. For some FAQ & Email Best Practices, see the info at the end of this email.
Terms of Use
Based on concerns raised by PMJS membership, in recent weeks the PMJS Steering Committee convened to discuss three issues: housing advertisements, posts containing AI-generated content, and posting policies in connection to institutions complicit in genocide.
In the case of the former two, the Steering Committee drafted and voted to approve two changes to our Terms of Use:
Amendment:
Be relevant. PMJS is a forum for discussion of premodern Japan. Posts should be pertinent, with appropriate tone and style for a professional and collegial community. Critical examination of pertinent topics, theories and hypotheses is welcome. Personal correspondence should be conducted off-list.
【Addition:】 "Advertisements of a purely commercial nature that do not directly contribute to academic exchange or to the intellectual purpose of the list are discouraged. For safety and privacy reasons, PMJS does not allow advertisements for temporary or permanent housing."
New Term of Use:
8. Show your work. PMJS aims to share scholarly knowledge as a part of intellectual and research processes. When emailing the list for assistance (or responding to queries), please include information on any sources already consulted on the topic and/or indicate the context of your inquiry. In the interest of promoting academic integrity and standards of scholarly inquiry, please be transparent about and reflective on any AI-generated research material. AI-generated responses to list inquiries that appear dubious or unproductive may not be posted.
The Steering Committee discussed the above changes at length, also considering feedback from the Moderation Team on commonly-encountered issues when ensuring the quality of posts to the list. As always, we endeavor to promote intellectual exchange while remaining a community that is open to all persons with an interest in premodern Japan. These changes to the Terms of Use are now reflected on the PMJS website.
In the case of the latter point of discussion, the Mod Team was contacted by concerned members of the PMJS community on the subject of promoting events held at or sponsored by institutions complicit in genocide. This is a sensitive issue that the Moderation Team felt was important enough to elevate to the PMJS Steering Committee for discussion. After discussion, the Steering Committee concluded that no new policies related to this issue will be established.
List Management
Christina Laffin has stepped back from duties related to PMJS coordination, though she has kindly agreed to continue supporting the management of our Google Workspace and domain (which allow the website and email addresses associated with PMJS to remain active). I will remain as a logistics manager, and we will continue to consider how to best maintain PMJS’s digital presence, which does incur annual fees that Christina has been generous enough to pay for for the last several years. We are deeply grateful to Christina for her dedication and service to the list, particularly as we restructured to enhance the inclusivity of the list.
Given our moment of transition for list moderators and the holidays rapidly approaching, we hope you will be patient with us when it comes to email approvals or responses. Every email sent to the list is reviewed by our volunteer team of moderators.
For management-related questions, please feel free to reach out to me at prcu...@g.ucla.edu or prcu...@umich.edu (both are active). For moderation-related questions, please refer to the Moderation Team email, mod...@pmjs.org.
Thank you to everyone for your many contributions to the list and its maintenance!
Best,
Paula
PMJS Logistics Manager
Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities
- If you would like to change the email address you use with PMJS, you will have to unsubscribe your first email and resubscribe the new one. You can do this yourself on the google groups website. See our guide to subscribing and unsubscribing for help: LINK Please do you best not to ask the Moderation Team to do this for you if you can help it, you have the power! But we're happy to assist you if you're having trouble with it.
- Having issues posting to the list? Usually this has to do with an email being in moderation or attempting to post from an email profile that is not subscribed to PMJS (which will automatically get rejected). See our FAQ page for some guides to possible issues.
- Not sure how to best compose an email that goes out to 1500 people? We made a Best Practices guide for that! (https://bit.ly/PMJS_Best_Practices) It can be intimidating for some, and we want everyone to keep comfortable making contributions.
- Not sure what you can or should post? Please review to our Terms of Use for a guide to keeping content relevant to the community and interaction collegial: https://www.pmjs.org/guidelines
- Be careful when you hit "Reply" that you're not accidentally replying to the PMJS email when you mean to reply privately to an individual. Our moderators field a lot of mistaken reply alls and don't want your private messages going to the list anymore than you probably do. :)
- All emails go into a moderation process, which means they must be approved or rejected by our Moderation Team. The Moderation Team is a small group of volunteers in different locations across the world. They try their best to review all emails within 48 hours.
- If an email is delayed from posting, there are two possibilities: 1) it is awaiting approval, or 2) there may be an issue with the email that requires review according to the PMJS guidelines. IF the email may have an issue (that is, potentially violates the PMJS guidelines), the Moderation Team emails one another to discuss the matter and decides how to respond.
- The Moderation Team may then approve the message or contact the original writer to ask them to revise their email and repost. The Moderation Team is not able to edit your emails for you, only approve or reject emails.
- In the event of an email that needs to be revised, the author may then resend it to the list and it enters the moderation process once more. The Mod Team reviews it once again and (ideally) it then gets approved.