Aside from a place to find jobs and CFPs, is H-Net still relevant to how people do history?

I say no. But be warned: if you dare to make the argument I made in that post, the H-Net vice president of marketing will send you nasty e-mails. The worst one was when he sent me one gloating over the hosting problems I had in September 2007.

Stopping by to say hi! And the blog you mentioned in the post sounds intriguing.

The H-Net folks have always been pretty proactively protective of their turf. Which is understandable. They're the only ones who do what they do.

There are people inside of H-Net who are working to find ways to bring the basic concept out of listserv to some kind of web-based forum.

That said, and I think I've said this before, "push" media are actually very good for CFPs, job ads, that sort of thing.

I like the idea of a professional space, a moderated one, especially, that isn't immediately obvious to the entire world (especially our students), so I'm of somewhat mixed feelings regarding the switch.

Also, I'm running behind on my syllabi, so I don't have time to think too hard about this....

Andrew, I do understand that, but I think the private gloating about my troubles was a little much.

Ahist, I think you and I differ on this one. With the amount of public distrust of academics that's out there, I think we should be striving for as much transparency as possible. While I don't view H-Net as elitist -- given that anybody can join any list for any reason -- if there were an option to make it more public than it is, I'd be all for it. (As you know, the list messages are already archived publicly online.)

"I think the private gloating about my troubles was a little much."


I would agree.

With the amount of public distrust of academics that's out there, I think we should be striving for as much transparency as possible.

I think you're overestimating the importance of the Horowitzians, and going way beyond what's necessary. I agree that a greater degree of transparency in institutional life would be good for all of us; I agree that more openness and public discussion of educational goals and methods would be good; I want to see more public discussion and application of research findings and sophisticated argumentation.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't issues -- professional ones and personal ones -- where discussion wouldn't be greatly enhanced by the availability of a closed space. So much of what we do is already public: I'd like some room for rough drafts, for unformed thoughts, for hemming and hawing that won't come back to bite me in the ass.

Kimberly Wilder is great. She was offered a spot at independentpoliticalreport.com, but I'm not sure what happened with that.

Ahistoricality, good points. Sounds like you speak from experience.