Dear WPA-L community:
As you may remember, a volunteer working group formed for the purpose of creating new foundations for the WPA listserv. Our work responds to a range of troubling situations in the listserv discourse over the past few years, as well as the practical need to plan ahead for the retirement of the current listowner, Barry Maid, who has been hosting the listserv at ASU for many years.
This email contains potentially important information about the WPA-L’s future, so we hope you take a few minutes to read through the documents we have linked below. We will also be sending out a survey at the end of June to democratically plan for the WPA-L’s future, which will include:
Below we have linked two detailed documents we have developed collaboratively. We hope that you will read and consider them carefully as we will send you a survey invitation to vote regarding three points proposed in the documents so that any decisions will be made collectively by the WPA-L members. Our anticipated timeline is that the WPA-L community would discuss the proposed changes over a period of two weeks; we will send the survey link on June 28, and allow a short period to complete the survey, which would then close on July 9 .
Please read our Proposal Document first. This document outlines the reasons why we believe the WPA-L needs a new framework as well as suggestions for using a moderation board, details about the new location of the list, and changing the WPA-L’s name. We have a positive vision for the listserv as a communal space in which members in widely varying institutions, career trajectories, and positionalities can interact productively and supportively.
Next, we ask you to review our proposed Participation Guidelines. Our working group drew on existing guidelines from other successful online communities to develop these and built on the crowd-sourced version that emerged last Spring. We envision that small teams of volunteers will monitor the listserv discussions on a rotating basis and intervene when support is needed. We already have a list of more than 50 folks who have volunteered for this work.
Finally, we will be coming back to you in two weeks (June 28) to ask you to complete a survey to provide feedback on the proposed changes. The form will be a brief 3-question survey giving you the opportunity to indicate whether you support adopting the participation guidelines, the forming of a moderation board, as well as whether to keep our current name or select a new name for this community.
Best wishes,
WPA Reimagining Working Group
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