It was founded by Anthony Aristar in early 1990 at the University of Western Australia,[1] and is used as a reference by the National Science Foundation in the United States.
[2] Its main and oldest feature is the premoderated electronic mailing list, with subscribers all over the world.
In 2013, Aristar-Dry and Aristar retired from Eastern Michigan University and Damir Cavar became the moderator and director of operations.
[citation needed] In recent years it has become a site for research into linguistic infrastructure on the web, and has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation to do this work.
[18] It has also produced a phonetics ontology, based upon Peter Ladefoged's and Ian Maddieson's The Sounds of the World's Languages.