[Coco] General Information about BITNET mailing lists and their newsgroup mir

[John E. Malmberg]

Information of the relationship between the bit.listserv.* and their
associated mailing lists appears to be available at this link, along with
contact information.

The exact issue of what to when a list has no real owner, is not covered
by the FAQ, except that the policy seems to be to delete it and it's associated
newsgroup mirror.

And it may be possible to find another BITNET host that is willing to sponser
the link.  According to the FAQ, one or more BITNET members can be hosting a
link.  The BITNET hosts require a student or faculty member be the owner
of the list.

   http://listserv.buffalo.edu/owner/gateway.html

But one thing appears to be clear from this article.  Deletion of the COCO
mailing list from all BITNET hosts may cause deletion of the newsgroup, and
there does not appear to be a way to tell if any other BITNET host is an
alternate host for the COCO list.  Everything I can see is that only Princeton
is hosting the COCO list.

And it indicates that the bit.listserv.* does not normally mirror mailing
lists that are not provided by BITNET listserv hosts.

Buffalo.edu does not seem to have archives of the COCO list.


The instructions at newsadmin.com do not seem to indicate that the
bit.listserv.* newsgroups are limited to listserv members, but are subject
to newsadmin.com's approval.

  http://newsadmin.com/bit/bit.htm

But the procedure for a change over, may involve Princeton deleting the mailing
list, which should trigger the newsgrop being deleted, and then someone could
apply to have it recreated and gated to a new mailing list.

Or it could go easier, depending on how cooperative Princeton.edu and
newsadmin.com.

Since Princeton owns the mailing list, by the current charter of the
bit.listserv.coco, they also control the newsgroup.  And it would be wrong for
newsadmin.com to make any changes with out being approved by Princeton.

And it would be up to Dennis to decide if he wants to have the
bit.listserv.coco changed or recreated to mirror his list in the event that
Princeton drops it.  It may be possible to put a request in to newsadmin.com
that when or if the Princeton mailing list is shutdown to transfer the gateway
to another mailing list.

This mailing list as it is, works fine for me.

I would not recommend operating any mailing list that accepts postings from
unsubscribed e-mail addresses, if a new list that is gated to the
bit.listserv.coco is created.  The rate of spam/trolls directly from usenet is
low enough for an active list that normally no moderation is needed.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only