Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Can we change the platform for this listserve?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Aug 14, 2024, at 12:05 AM, Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> FAQ:  What's the policy on attachments? What are the alternatives?
> http://justcomm.org/jc-faq.htm#Q10

I pasted in below the reasoning on attachments from Fred’s archives. I have 
refused for years to turn on attachments on one of my lists of ~3000 
subscribers for all of these reasons plus confusion. I use Groups.io 
<http://groups.io/> which stores attachments but deletes the older ones when 
the storage space is used up. I was concerned that people would try to read a 
message with a deleted attachment and start a discussion of where are the 
attachments every other day. But no one on the list wanted to take on the task 
of deleting attachments that were not important beyond the day they were posted 
so we could keep the essential ones.

I researched what Groups.io <http://groups.io/> does to prevent infected 
attachments — they have enterprise quality filtering — and finally turned them 
on. There have been no problems and it has become a wonderful resource. We sell 
personally owned things on our list — neighbor to neighbor — and attaching 
pictures has been eternally helpful and reduces requests for pictures to be 
mailed privately. (Things are typically gone within 10-20 minutes.) Pictures of 
missing pets are posted immediately — and found faster. 

On the cohousing list, it would be wonderful to have pictures that accompany 
discussions on the “the best table” or "how do you set up the laundry room.” A 
picture is worth a thousand words. What does your playroom look like? I used 
such photos is to convince my own community to upgrade the guest rooms by 
posting pictures of other guest rooms I solicited privately. Others looked like 
personalized B&Bs and ours looked like bad Thrift Shop sale days. Our members 
had not moved beyond the scarcity mentally we were operating under when we 
moved in and there was no concept of ever having enough money to purchase new 
furniture for the guest rooms. 

But this list is Fred’s list. He has spent yeoman’s hours and efforts in 
service to it daily to keep it going and many more hours indexing the archives 
so they remain useful. He started all of this when there were no other 
alternatives. Lists were not common and still echoed MS-Dos and dot matrix 
printers. In the 1990s memory and storage were expensive if they were 
accessible to a free list at all.

Part of what is happening is that we are confronting a generational shift. 
Cohousing is in a different place than it was in 1994 when I joined the list 
and I’m in a different place. At almost 82, I’m trying to hand on the list I 
developed for the neighborhood and trying to find someone to take over. We were 
grandfathered into Groups.io <http://groups.io/> when they began charging for 
groups over 100 members. A list of 500 members costs $20 a month to host. 

Many people prefer forums to email lists and I had hoped the website would 
develop an active forum. But websites have a different mentality than email 
lists. They are more highly policed and moderated. Nothing is instant. There 
are layers of responsibility and approval. They aren’t nimble. 

Email is nimble — which drives some people crazy. The asynchronous dialogue 
necessary for spontaneity isn’t comfortable for everyone. And the lack of extra 
features also contributes to the nimbleness, and the lack of cost. It’s basic 
communication in text. 

Until we know where cohousing is going next — what does it really need? — and 
as long as we have Fred, we have Cohousing-L. We could think about what might 
be next but I don’t think we are ready to change anything. And as Fred has 
said, he isn’t.

Sharon

> 10:What's the policy on attachments? What are the alternatives? 
> 
> Justcomm listservs are configured to strip attachments. The reasons
> for this are:
> o Attachments sometimes contain destructive executable software.
> o Attachments tend to be large and cause problems for some subscribers
> by filling their inboxes.
> o Large attachments require much space in archives.
> o Generally attachments are not searchable in archives.
> o Often attachments require software that not all subscribers have available
> which limits access to the information. Three main examples:
> Microsoft Word files (.doc)
> Adobe .pdf files (intended for printing or highly formatted info)
> Rich text (.rtf which Macintosh often uses)
> Often all of these contain just text which can be copied to the message body.
> Sometimes special formats ARE needed - spreadsheets, images and tables but
> some software often makes it easy to use these file types when not needed.
> o Files in formats that allow color can be printed in black and white and 
> lose key
> information. We recently had an event announcement printed, email deleted and 
> some
> time passed before we realized that the date of the event was missing tho 
> there was
> space where we suspect it was printed in a color that did not print. Note 
> that color
> printing is still relatively expensive.