Wordorigins.org

If you wish to contact us other than electronically, you can send postal mail to:

Dave Wilton
Wordorigins.org
457 Marlee Ave., #303
Toronto, ON M6B 3J2
Canada

Starting next week, the first week in August, I’ll be decamping to Toronto. As a result, I’ll have limited internet access for a week or so, as Dexter and I drive northeastward across the continent, and I’ll have no access to my print library for several weeks. (Fortunately, the online resources I now have access to through the University of Toronto are just superb.)

I’ll still be checking in at least daily to see how the site is going and to purge spammers, but my posting will be sparse. So go ahead and talk amongst yourselves.

If you have just signed up or are considering signing up to post comments on the site’s discussion forum, be advised there is a chance that your account will be deleted if you don’t post something within a day or two of signing up. A typical pattern for spammers is to sign up to a site and then return a week or so later to post their spam messages. I have a policy of deleting obvious spam accounts immediately and deleting all new accounts after two to three days with no activity. Once a member has posted a (non-spam) message to the forum, the account stays active regardless of future periods of inactivity.

So if you are a newcomer and like the site, but don’t have anything to say right away, hold off on signing up until you want to make a comment. Lurkers are welcome and you can read everything on the site without signing up. If you find your account has been deleted between signing up and posting your first message, just sign up again and post your message.

(I’m using the word spam to denote the practice of placing marketing messages in web-forums. Some might say that spam is rightly only applied to email, but I don’t know what else to call it.)

I’ve just finished an overhaul of the resources section of the website. I’ve added new sources (mostly websites), culled less useful sources and those of too narrow focus or only tangentially related to the aims of this site, and organized them into new, more useful categories.

Comments and suggestions are welcome in the meta discussion section of the site’s forums.

Dave Wilton

Dave Wilton is graduate student in medieval English literature at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). Dave has an M.A. from George Washington University in National Security Policy Studies and a B.A. from Lafayette College in Government & Law.

Dexter

Dexter is the staff assistant here at Wordorigins.org. His duties include reception and greeting of visitors, multiple daily perambulations, pursuit of delivery persons, mastication of assorted objects, and olfactory investigations.

Dexter holds a diploma in Basic Obedience from the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society.