Stephen Clark to retire from PHILOS-L, ‘the Liverpool List’
Professor emeritus Stephen Clark founded ‘The Liverpool List’ a few years into his chair. Stephen retired in 2009 but has continued to manage PHILOS-L and many of you will have received emails from him over the years.
As the Liverpool List approaches its 30th Birthday, Stephen is handing the reins back to the Philosophy department where it all began. Here we reflect on the list’s history and Stephen’s incredible service to philosophy.
Anarchy Tempered by Despotism
The list’s motto is ‘Anarchy Tempered by Despotism’. A missive from Stephen Clark in August 1989 set the early tone:
“For those of you who haven’t previously used a[n email list]: the success of such a thing depends entirely on the willingness of subscribers to make a spectacle of themselves, without losing their tempers and without going on at quite inordinate length. Think of it as a common-room conversation, with slightly more time-out for reflection, and no problems about getting a word in edgeways. Try out half-baked ideas if you like, or make pithy comments on such half-baked ideas as have been posted already. But the hotline isn’t only for philosophical conversation: use it to convey information - both administrative and academic - and to ask straightforward questions (‘where can I find a machine-readable text of Philo De Somniis?’ ‘who said that this life is a dream and a delirium?’).”
The Liverpool List Today
Since the mid-noughties, facebook and twitter have provided alternative forums for half-baked ideas, and the Liverpool List is now mostly a place for philosophers worldwide to share information and ask questions. PHILOS-L is now the largest Philosophy email list in the world. The list currently boasts 10896 members in over 60 countries, with an additional 9000 Facebook subscribers and over 3000 twitter followers (@philosl).
You can track the changing use of the list through the message archive at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
30 years of the Liverpool List
Here, Stephen reflects on the history of an unruly list.
“When I founded the list back in 1989, with the enthusiastic help of Computing Services (first Chris Wooff, and later Alan Thew), the chief Philosophy list was Philosop, run from Canada. A chattier list was NSP-L ("Noble Savage Philosphers" [sic]) run by a US postgrad.
As more people joined PHILOS-L (and the listserv system evolved) it was sometimes subject to flurries of mails about contentious matters. I took to remarking that the basic rule for the list was "anarchy tempered by despotism" - that is, people could say what they wished until I told them to stop.
There were very occasional attempts to ignore my instructions - people with obsessions, people with apocalyptic programmes, and so on. There were also occasions when I became aware that someone was a con artist, advertising new journals or conferences or whatever with a claim to institutional or other respectable backing that did not in fact exist. I established Chora as a pure discussion list to divert people away from the main list, and eventually began to moderate posts - at first only the few posters who seemed most inclined to ignore the rules, and eventually the whole membership. Some oldtimers took offence at this, but everyone seems now to accept the system.
Managing the list, especially in the early years, did need someone with the clout or perhaps the chutzpah to intervene and demand a halt (and to ignore the occasional hate mail). Nowadays that is less important, as most people have grown up with the rules and treat the list as a place to make announcements (Calls for Papers, Conference Announcements, Job advertisements etc) and to ask, occasionally, for help. I try to make sure that queries are answered offlist, and the results - if relevant - posted to the list by the original enquirer.
There are other lists nowadays - especially Aphil-L for Australasia - but a lot of the conversations that used to happen on email lists now occur instead on social media like Facebook or Twitter (there are Philos-L links to both these outlets).
I have always emphasised the list’s standing as ‘the Liverpool list’.”
The future of the Liverpool List
As list management moves back into the department, we hope you will notice no difference. We will strive to manage and administer the list with the same quiet and helpful despotism you are all used to. Please help us out by letting us know if you notice falling standards or glitches and we’ll do our best to fix them.
As we move into the Anniversary year we are hoping to make some small changes to make the list more user-friendly and would welcome any suggestions from list-users on this topic. However, as custodians of the Liverpool List we will mostly be looking to ensure that it is business as usual for the world’s largest philosophy list.
Please contact rachael.wiseman@liverpool.ac.uk and for further information go to https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/
We hope you will all join us in thanking Stephen for his service to our community. You can tweet @philosl using #stephenclark if you’d like to share memories, comments or thanks.