RE: Archive question
From: Greg Dunn (MyListsgregdunn.com)
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 19:28:04 -0700 (MST)
Dec 14, 2002:  Check out new URL at end of this (and every list message) for 
Cohousing-L info page.  Season's Greetings.  Fred, list manager.
- -

Thanks for the info, catya.  Now that you mention it, I do remember some
of those "sunspots" of fouled up mail delivery, and this makes me
realize I'm not currently depending upon any of the Yahoo groups I'm
working with for more-or-less mission critical work...so the sunspots
could come and go and I might not even notice.

The above could all be growing pains, of course.  I rather doubt that
Yahoo anticipated just how popular the groups would become, and how
quickly.  And of course it's right in the middle of all the adjustments
due to the crash of the dot com bubble, and the enforced retooling of
all financing models associated with web-based services.  But be that as
it may, maybe it's just best for the more casual type of discussion
group.

I've been working lately with Microsoft Sharepoint, a tool for building
web sites that support collaborative work.  In its current version it
has a few rough edges, but it certainly makes putting up a collaborative
site easier than I've ever seen or heard of it being.  You can share
files of all kinds; parcel out administrative rights to allow different
people to maintain the site (which is done with a simple, web-based
interface); and define "lists", which are basically database tables with
a visual interface which can be at the site using just the browser, by
anyone who's been given appropriate rights. By default you get lists for
Announcements, Events, Tasks, and Contacts; but you can define your own,
for any purposes you need, including defining fields and selecting from
quite a few different data types for each field (e.g., text field,
lookup, hyperlink, etc.).

Sharepoint also comes with a discussion board, which I haven't really
tested much (and certainly haven't beat on).  My web host tells me the
discussion board is "lame", but I'm not sure exactly what he means by
that (e.g., not suitable for supporting a discussion with 10,000
messages a day, or not suitable for use by a relatively small group).

Greg Dunn
 


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org] On Behalf Of Catya
Belfer-Shevett
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 8:16 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: RE: [C-L]_Archive question


Dec 14, 2002:  Check out new URL at end of this (and every list message)
for Cohousing-L info page.  Season's Greetings.  Fred, list manager.
- -

> I belong to about 30 Yahoogroups and have set up more than a dozen of 
> them, and haven't experienced the mail delays you speak of. Can you 
> elaborate on the problems you've experienced?

I'm probably on almost that many - basically, we get days when messages
get delivered out of order, with random delays, etc.

This is not such a big deal for the "fun" lists, but can be a real
problem for our cohousing business lists - to give one example of many,
we had a day where someone sent three posts pretty much at once, one
with a proposal, two with backing information.  There were hours of
delay between the proposal and the backing information to most of the
people on the list, generating much confusion.  (And much annoyance from
the original posted when I tried to fill in the background info,
duplicating a bunch of his work but in a more rushed fashion.)

Also, Yahoo drops people from the lists if they get even transient mail
bounces (4 hour delays or whatever) a couple times, without notifying
either the person or the list manager that they have been dropped.

In general, it's a great service and has lots of features that we use
regularly.  The problems we've had with mail delivery are really way too
frequent and unmanageable, though.

So, we're working on a changeover off of yahoo.  Fortunately, we are
heavy on tech-savvy people (aka geeks), who think this is a wonderful
project.  :)

        - catya
                              ____
Catya Belfer-Shevett      ____\  /      Interested in
catya [at] pobox.com           \  / \/      Cohousing in MA?
www.catya.org              \/       www.mosaic-commons.org

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L


_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.