On Jan 31, 2023, at 8:43 AM, Les Schaffer <les.schaffer@...> wrote:

Here are some challenges. 

1. The list is English only. Only very rarely does anyone contribute anything in any other language. This limits not only who reads the list and who writes for the list, but the topics and takes on those topics. 

This was one of Anthony's ideas in the document that Les posted. I personally resonated with it.  Since we are all presumably internationalists, this idea should be worthy of support or at least comment.  But it presents a few challenges starting with how to do such a thing.

There are at least four different ways to do it:  Translation can be done by humans or by machine translation, and either of these two options can implement a translation from English to multiple languages or from multiple languages to multiple languages. So that makes 4 alternative designs in total.

We cut the alternatives in half by eliminating human translation since we don't have the people to do that, among other problems.  And if we can't make this work for translating mail that's posted in English to other languages, then we won't be able to take mail posted in multiple languages and then translate it to different languages.

The simplified problem, therefore, is to continue using English as a posting language and show that machine translation to other languages works.  There are a couple of ways to do that:  We can translate at the mail server or the mail client.  Machine translation at the mail server will incur costs in licensing translation software and integrating it with groups.io.  Mail translation at the client avoids those costs.  It has the added advantage of already existing in the Chrome browser and gmail and by integrating some other (presumably better) machine translation software in the browser or mail program of your choice.

So, one proposal for realizing Anthony's vision is to try out just translating in Chrome for mail that is received in English, as is the policy today, but translated on a subscriber's mail app to the languages of their choice.  We could document how to do it for subscribers who wish to read marxmail in a different language than English, and then evaluate how good it is.  

This will require some volunteers

Mark

On Feb 3, 2023, at 10:01 AM, Roger Kulp <leucovorinsaves@...> wrote:

This is in resonse to Marv Gandall,and his comment about "the decline and demise of its aging constituency of Marxists" . It is not the content and subject matter of the topics on this list that is irrelevant to younger Marxists, it's the nature of this list itself.

I am a very active member of one of the larger Marxist-Leninist parties in the USA. It isn't the DSA, that's all I will say. I am a member of one of the largest branches of the party outside of DC, and NYC. We are appproaching 100 active members in our branch, and even more semiactive members,and friends of the party. Like a lot of radical political organizations, we have large bursts, and upticks in our membership numbers, and periods where our membership remains relatively stable, all based on the external political circumstances. We have also made allies with communist parties around the world, and have sent regular delegations to Cuba, and Venezuela.

A brief summary of the demographics of our branch breaks down like this. We have two members over 70, a retired health care worker, and a semiretired college professor, the only other person in our branch who has heard of Marxmail, myself in my 60s, three members in their 40s a genuine Marxist attorney, a rare treasure, a high school history teacher, and a primary care physician at a low income health clinic. The rest of our membership is made of people under 35. Millennials, and older Generation Z people. They mostly seem to be a mix of graduate students, and workers in low income jobs, although there is one guy who is both the son of Central American immigrants, and a head of a local of a carpenters union. Our party has what might be called a subparty at high schools,and universities, called Students For Socialism. These are people from the downwardly mobile generations hurt by the neoliberal US policies of the last fifty years, and have personally experienced the lies, fraud and oppression of the US capitalist system. These people are too busy with both party work, and the struggles of their daily lives to be reading, and posting, at an old school email/ bulletin board, like Marxmail. While lists like Marxmail have their good points, and educational benefits, they are pretty much a relic of the early years ofthe internet. The rest of the web has long since moved on.  

On Feb 1, 2023, at 9:12 PM, Barry Brooks <durable@...> wrote:



There is a reason both Yahoo and Google have shut down their email groups that followed the same format as this group.

The main reason Y&G shut it down was probably because of money, but unlike Y&G the goal of Marxmail was never to make money. Why follow a bad example? So popular wins over thoughtful? Small is beautiful.

So long as there are at least two subscribers active on Marxmail it will be an un-holy relic still worth a futile quest. Be thankful that its small flaws mean Marxmail is not either too good to last or bad enough to win by any means.

Barry