From: Michael Schauerte (mikeschauerte@GMAIL.COM)
Date: Sun May 06 2007 - 22:12:55 EDT
To avoid possible confusion, I said my experience in the "past year" in that last post because I have only been a volunteer for one year. And as long as I'm posting again, I want to emphasize that each volunteer is free to add whatever they like to the site. It isn't surprising, of course, that they add those things they think are important, which obviously reflects their own viewpoint. In my case, for example, I'm translating from Japanese to English, which is something of a time-consuming endeavor, so I can hardly be expected to translate works I feel have little value just to balance out the perspectives. And no matter how late I work into the night, there would always be those who feel their political tendency is not adequately represented. The only way to "correct" this state of affairs is for more translators to upload works to the page on Japan, which I would enthusiastically welcome. And the same is true of every other page on the MIA. Instead of complaining about how things are, I would encourage the university professors on this mailing list, who have good access to materials that might be uploaded to the MIA, to become volunteers. This could involve scanning materials, doing HTML markup, or as in my case translating works by Marxists unknown outside of their country of origin. Up to now it has been political activists that have done the lion's share of this work. It seems a bit rich to criticize a website, in armchair fashion, for reflecting the views of the people who put in the time to make it a reality. Michael
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