Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Archive question

[Art Gorski (agorski]

> > I personally prefer Yahoogroups to list servers because they make it
> > easier to set and change personal options, and offer the ability to go
> > semi-dormant (online perusal only) without suspending the 
> > subscription.
> > Of course, newsgroups are even better, by a wide margin.

I'm mightily suspicious of any web-based forum that requires 
registration to use.  So I've never experienced Yahoogroups and can't 
comment on that.

> But can you explain what newsgroups are? And channels? I never got my 
> head
> around newsgroups and now I have channels popping up everywhere.

Usenet is the 'news' service that runs on top of the Internet, much 
like the World Wide Web and email are other examples of services that 
run on the Internet.  There are 10's of thousands of 'newsgroups', 
which you access by running a 'newsreader' client program that connects 
to a news server that carries the 'feed'.  Netscape Communicator has a 
newsreader built-in, as does Outlook Express, so you may already have 
the software you need to access it.  Your internet service provider 
almost surely has a news server running.  You'd have to ask them how to 
connect to it.

Newsgroups are generally unmoderated, and posters can be anonymous, 
which means that there is no protection from obnoxious behavior.  Some 
groups are better than others.  There are groups for literally 
anything, but you don't have to subscribe to the one's that shock your 
morals.  Usenet seems to be waning in favor of web-based forums, since 
the idealistic organization of Usenet has been abused so much by spam 
and bad behavior.

IRC, Internet Relay Chat, has thousands of 'channels' that people can 
join.  It's like AOL Instant Messenger with strangers.  Everything 
happens in real-time.  It's even more chaotic and anarchic than Usenet.

> In case you were in doubt, this is highly related to cohousing because 
> email
> has been highly instrumental in developing cohousing communities, 
> developing
> them faster, and allowing people to participate and join groups when 
> they
> are geographically distant, contributing to greater diversity.

I believe that the current method of moderated mailing list with 
web-based archives is a good choice for Cohousing-L.

Art Gorski    <http://is.rice.edu/~agorski/>
90% Houston, Texas and 10% Prescott, Arizona

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