Firstly, thanks to John for all his efforts running the email list - it can
be a time-consuming job whatever platform you are running it on.
John lists his requirements below, and I rather suspect he has modestly
omitted one - for administration time to be minimised. We all know these
'forwarded from the bounce bin' messages he sends, and I know I've been
guilty of causing at least one when thoughtlessly sending from my work email
address. They are a hassle to have to administer, and it is a credit to John
that he keeps on top of them instead of doing the job once a month, by which
time most of them would be way out of date.
irreconcilable? LSoft have a list server called listserv, and (more
importantly) run a listserv server farm hosting huge numbers of lists as a
service. I used them in the past when I was Webmaster to the ThrustSSC
project, and they kindly hosted our lists for free. I think they would
almost certainly do so for the Europa Club. Things have moved on since the
Thrust days (nearly 4 years now!), and the lists are even more configurable
now, as well as easier to administer. I strongly suspect they would meet
your requirements bar the file storage area. They also have useful features
like the ability for a member to request daily/weekly/monthly accumulations
of postings instead of lots of individual little postings. Best of all, if
someone posts from a non-member email address, it tells them, and allows you
to pass or reject the posting. We never had any spam problems - any spam
attempts simply came to me and I happily exercised the delete key.
If you want to look into this option, and would like some assistance, please
let me know. I'd be more than happy to help.
Regards,
Jeremy
Jeremy Davey
Senior Consultant
AvantGo Europe Ltd
Tel: +44-(0)20 7776-4245
Mobile: +44-(0)7788 148622
-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of John Cliff
Sent: 24 August 2001 10:44
Subject: The Move
Obviously there has been a strong adverse reaction to my proposed move to
become a Yahoo group.
The central issue seems to be the likelihhod of the member address list
being passed to third parties. The group itself is closed-to-members, nobody
else can post to it and only text can be posted, no attachments.
This (Avnet) List continues and will do so until we ask Avnet to turn it
off, which we are not about to do.
Does anyone know of a better alternative ? This should be free, allow
restriction to text messages (to choke off viruses) and preferably provide a
member-accessible file storage area and a usable administrator interface.
Anyone who has not yet responded to the joining invitation from Yahoo might
like to suspend doing so for a day or two. I am the owner of Europa-Forum
and could destroy it and (ostensibly) its address list with it.
John Cliff
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