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30627: Corbett (reply) 30626: Edouard (question) Haitians on list (fwd)





From: Felix Edouard <loveayiti@hotmail.com>

Felix says:

I have been so busy I have not had time to participate in many discussion
on list. However, it appears that over the past year or so most of the
discussions/comments come from Americans or Foreigners. I don't think
this was always the case and I know there of many Haitian and
Haitian-American list members.

Corbett replies: Felix, I less sure than you that what you claim above is a fact. There are, indeed, many Haitian and Haitian-Americans on the list. But from my posting of notes, it seems to me that the list has ALWAYS been dominated more by non-Haitians than Haitians or Haitian-Americans.

The list began back in 1994 with 7 people and they were all non-Haitians.
It was sometime before the first Haitians and Haitian-Americans joined.
Further, I chose way back when to make it both a moderated list and
an English-only list, and that made it more likely that fewer Haitians, at least, would be contributors to the list. Actually it was only recently, probably no more that 3-4 years ago, if that long, that we had members on the list who were living in Haiti. There wasn't adequate internet connectivity to allow that.

I don't write to says this is a good thing or bad thing. I have no feeling about that. But, I just doubt the fact you seem to rely on that there was every a preponderance of Haitians or Haitian-Americans on the list.

I have no idea at how either:

-- how many people are on the list
-- what their backgrounds are

For security reasons I set the list up so that it was subscribed by e-mail address only, and no by name, and that I have absolutely no possiblity of accessing the list itself. I wanted to be sure nothing like that was ever on my own computer in case it got hacked. That's also why I don't save any of the notes after I post them, though they are archived on the Webster U. system (however, the notes after # 12,262 are not avaialble to use -- I can't get the Webster webmaster to post those).

Bob Corbett
list moderator