Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Archive question

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

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.
- -

The messages on "archives" , "yahoo", and "listservs" border on being
off-topic for Cohousing-L in the sense that I suspect most people are not
interested in them but clearly some are.  I hope we can get back to
discussing cohousing soon.

The first messages did prompt me to set up an easier URL for the 
Cohousing-L Info Page:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

I hope everyone becomes familiar with it, it should answer a lot of
questions.  There is even a link to my page "About Mailing lists".  Having
it's the url  of Cohousing-L Info Page at the bottom of every message
should make it easy to find when you need it. 
(I'll take the banner about this off the beginning of list messages
shortly.)



As list manager I've responded to a number of the messages below
and of course my responses reflect my personal preferences generally.

Feel free to ignore the rest of this message.

Yahoogroups - pluses, minuses and interesting:
+ free and anyone can start a list for discussion or announcements
+ Web-based searchable archives
+ "My groups" page for those who read multiple Yahoogroups
- ads,ads,ads  Paying $60/month removes the first advantage and even
  paid lists have ads on their website including the annoying
  intervening ad page when accessing an some archived messages.
- lack of support, most yahoogroup managers I know don't bother to ask
  for support any more - they ask each other over a yahoogroup.
- Potential for privacy abuse and other undesirable changes.  I think
  there is some potential here tho mostly for new schemes to increase ads.
  Yahoo has tried a couple time to put ads at the beginning of messages
  distributed - I think user outcry has forced them to backtrack.
o There is a way of restricting Yahoogroup subscriber lists.
o Other features have potential but are seldom used. In particular the
o Calendar feature but I consider a poorly maintained calendar LESS
  useful than no calendar and maintaining a web based calendar is a big
  job.  I have seldom seen it done well for an extended period (years).

I use Yahoogroups for a number of mostly small lists - I'm thinking of
moving some of those to Mailman.

Mailman, which was discussed in two messages, is the list server that
cohousng-L uses.  Mailman has web-based archives, nomail mode, web based
user commands, NO ADS and IMHO better/easier web-based list admin than
Yahoo.  I know of no Mailman hosts that allow free lists on all topics
(there is one for tech subjects).  Mailman is Open Source which I find
desirable - see http://www.opensource.org

Cohousing-L does not currently use the Mailman archives but has
complete (10 years - 60 Mbytes) of web based archives and two search
mechanisms - full text and subject line.
Cohousing-L features - commands, archives, searching are accessed
via the Cohousing-L Info Page 
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L

Cohousing-L is generally not "moderated" by which I mean messages are
generally posted without being reviewed.  I review messages that are
"rejected" for reasons such as containing html, being too long, or
coming from an address that is not subscribed to the list (some of the
latter are Spam some are address problems.) I'd like to find a way to
reject message with nothing or the word "digest" in the subject line. I
did experiment with moderating all messages a while back but concluded
it was more work than the benefits warranted.  I may put the list in
moderation on occasion. For example to filter out messages
on this topic :) (Joke joke!)

The Yahoogroups Cohousing-L is primarily a secondary (backup) archive.
It does allow Yahoogroup users to read the list in nomail mode via their
"My lists" page.  And to find cohousing-L via the extensive list of
lists.

HTML in email is problematic for some people, consumes extra bandwidth
and archive space and the html tags are sometimes visible to some users,
in digests and archives. As someone pointed out the capabilities of html
are seldom used. When they are needed (for tables, for example) a
solution is for the html to be put on the web as a regular web page
and the URL of the page to be mentioned in a Cohousing-L message.  I
would welcome a volunteer help create such pages. (I've done it a few
times.)  Long documents are also best posted as web pages and then
announced on the list.   I choose to not allow html on cohousing-L.

Newsgroups and web based discussions typically have more features
such as threading, some keep track of what you've read etc.  But they
require the participants to come to them. Mailing list discussions
take place "in people's inbox", that is the discussion comes to the
participants.  This is a huge advantage, particularly for small volume
or sporadic discussions.  The flip side of this is that high volume
lists can overwhelm people's inbox.  Hence my off-topic messages.

I looked at WIKI lists - they appear to be a more collaborative web
based interaction system.  They are not as linear as most discussions -
participants can go back and modify postings so they function better for
reference.  I'd guess that they work best for small dedicated groups but
for larger groups the increased complexity would hinder participation.
Maybe there is a way for most people to participate as a listserv and
some people take on an editorial role.  I think there is lots of room
for improved software to conduct discussions.  I have a wish list but
that's another discussion.

Fred, cohousing-L list manager

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411   (near north Mpls)
fholson [at] cohousing.org 612-588-9532 (7am-10pm Cent time) 
List manager of Cohousing-L & Nbhd-tc  Ham radio:WB0YQM          
Email signature details: http://www.cohousing.org/fholson


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