1.1    Purpose and standards

The purpose of this list is to provide a virtual forum for scholarly discussion of the HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS (in a broad sense), amongst professionals, and non-professionals with a serious interest in the field. All scholarly aspects of the history may be discussed, and in addition such issues as:

• History/Philosophy of History of Mathematics
  
• Current trends in the History of Mathematics
  
• Ethnomathematics
  
• History of mathematics in teaching mathematics
  
• Origin of mathematical terms/symbols
  
• Biographies and obituaries
  
• Bibliographical references (databases)
  
• Advertisements of new books, articles, videos, ... [*]
  
• Reviews of these items
  
• Announcements of conferences, meetings, jobs, ...
  

[*] A courtesy copy of these books, articles or videos to the host of this forum would be most welcome.


Pertinent queries, replies, comments ... should be written with the same standards of thoughtfulness and care that apply to other scholarly activities.

At any event, list members should strive to submit posts in a supreme and conscious effort to keep the signal-to-noise ratio so high as possible.

1.2    Languages

Messages should preferably be sent in English as a courtesy to the non-Spanish speaking members of the list, although the list is officially bilingual (Spanish and English).

Postings in other languages (e.g. French, German, Italian, Portuguese ...) are also welcome. But, in this case, whenever a long posting is sent out, an abstract in English would be highly appreciated. Although we do not think we should encourage too many languages on this forum (since many list members might just be monoglots), the list is to be open to those contributors who wish to communicate in their mother tongue, and do not feel confident enough in other languages.

If you are not familiar with the language of a post, but you suspect that the topic discussed is relevant, for instance, to your own field of study (some key-words in the email may suggest that), a solution somehow will be found - at least, we hope so. If you are not sufficiently interested in that thread, you may simply hit the 'delete' key.

1.3    Netiquette

Ego trips will mean trips outside the list. Whereas freedom of speech is wonderful, and discussion of controversial issues on the history of mathematics is to be expected (and welcome!), personal invective cannot take place on this forum.

From the beginning, it must be stated very emphatically that either misuse or abuse of the list, in a way or another, will cause cancellation of the subscription by the Director of [HM].

The list cannot be used to send either commercial or junk-mail of any kind - this includes unsolicited commercial advertisements, viruses warnings, chain letters.

If someone submits a post that seems to be rather off-topic or of dubious relevance to the list, PLEASE do not send complaints to the whole list. Contact the list owner instead.