[Coco] Thanks for the Princeton Bit.Listserv.CoCo Mail List. DRAFT

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

That entire message is intended for the list owner, not Princeton. The one
for
Princeton is still going round and round in my head and not been typed yet.

For many days I have been trying to come up with a way to thank the list
owner and not blame him for our troubles.

Unfortunately any contact with Princeton may bring down on his head bad
vibes.

I think that Princeton will be more upset with the owner not being attentive
than us still using the system. I previously stated that Princeton may not
wish to stop something that was working so well. But that is my option which
others may not agree with.

Having 6,147 lists, the master list owner is probably overloaded all the
time.

That is why they put so much power in the hands of list owners and require
them to exercise that power over their lists. Not just Princeton but the
many other users of the listserver software.

72 public lists are such a small fraction of the total number of lists that
they may well be under the radar if they are not contacted about. Private
and Public lists are separated very strongly. Looking at the public lists we
do not stick out as something that they would not want on their server. You
just have to see "Frame-Off Automobile Restoration" as one of the public
lists and several others to come to that conclusion.

Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Saturday 31 January 2004 23:24, Stephen H. Fischer wrote:
>> DRAFT - DRAFT - DRAFT
>>
> I have some trouble figureing out which will goto Princeton, and which
> is your comments.  However it looks as if the please shut it down
> portion should do the job.

The entire message is intended by me to go to the list owner (It may happen
that he never sees it).

> FWIW, I contacted the Princeton folks, oh, maybe in 98 or possibly
> even earlier, memory is hazy, and that message doesn't exist on this
> machine although it might be on my firewall yet, or it may even be so
> old its on my now defunct amiga.  At that time I was told by some
> probably flunky admin that it was best not to disturb the service as
> the very act of raising a hand to request a change might get TPTB to
> decide it was no longer worth the hassle and shut it down just to get
> some peace and quiet.  Based on that message, I recommended to the
> group that we simply lay low and put up with the crap.  If they are
> now claiming that they could have fixed it, we must be talking to two
> different administration people, not impossible considering the
> elapsed time of nearly 6 years.

I have not contacted anyone at Princeton yet. I have just been looking and
reading a volume of help for list owners and the tone of Princeton's and
others web pages.

I see nothing that the list owner cannot do that might require a higher
order of owner (Master List Owner "MLO"). List owner malfeasance is the only
reason for the MLO to step in from what I have read.

Why you contacted Princeton you do not state. I am interested in the reason.
A list owner might need some help in understanding how to do something,
they have a help desk just for that purpose as well as some files that the
names look interesting that owner permission is needed for access. The
listserver software site has more files. Remember again the number of lists,
6,147.

> In any event, Dennis's server is working very admirably indeed, so I
> see no reason to continue the suffering of b.l.coco, other than to
> ask what will become of us as a group if Dennis does in fact move to
> the Netherlands?  If Princeton is shut down, will we have burnt our
> last bridge?  I think that aspect might bear some thought, and this
> is not meant to question Dennis's generosity in any insulting way at
> all.  Its a fact of life that things and situations do change.

>
> --
> Cheers, Gene

Very true that we need backup positions. That is why it is very good that we
have the Yahoo list connected. Many of us have lists of other members so I
do not think we could ever get totally lost except for a total meltdown of
the Internet. Now that we are posting GPS locations we may be able to
survive even that.

Coming up with a emergency mailing list may require us to temporarily accept
a place with features or limits we are not happy with. But I do not see
finding another place as a hard thing to do. Getting ISP's to carry a new
Usenet news group I do not think can really be done, but I am still thinking
about that.

It is my option and reading of our group, but I do not see any possibility
that we would ever want to move back to Princeton. The SPAM might be
controlled there but we still would have vivid memories of all the SPAM.
Dennis has done such a good job for us!

I do not think that any effort to clean up the listserver list will  be
useful as we never will move back. And if the SPAM is stopped the list might
be deleted because there were no posts. Something like a catch 31. Do we
want to try?

I think that we would be better spending our efforts on contacting possible
new members.

Stephen H. Fischer <sfischer1 at mindspring.com>