Date:         Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:38:26 -0700
Reply-To:     honemastert <honemastert@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         honemastert <honemastert@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Modernizing the list redux; was: RE: Who is the Manager of
              thislist?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I've not seen forums work in the general sense,
like another listee said.. "If I wanted a forum, I'd
use The Samba"

It's really hard to get the back forth banter, and
connected ness that exists in text/email form.

Yahoo groups (in digest mode, via email) is
similar, but still not the same.

As for archival and searching, I did what many
of you have since done and used the original
"LISTERV" commands to pull *every* article
from Gerry and stick it in a gmail account.

I then use the google desktop search function
to search said account.  Works perfectly.. although
I have to remember from time to time to 'resubscribe'
that gmail address to the vanagon list.

There are plenty of other hosting options these
days I would think, although I'm not sure what
the actual amount of content is (size wise?)
I do know that my gmail account is not full
yet.

The issue there is one of cost.  The current
PC is free, save for the cost of electricity
to run it and the connection required to serve
up and send out the content.

A hosting service would require an annual
budget and cost. to be factored in.

As far as software....

What about majordomo software?

No one said it has to be a Windows based
machine.. Linux would work perfectly fine
going forward IMHO.

Whatever is done, the email basis
of the list should be maintained.

You'll see a fall off of participation if
it's moved to a web only forum type of
deal I think..

 -tim


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo_(software)

(the text)

Majordomo is a mailing list manager (MLM) developed by Brent Chapman
of Great Circle Associates. It is written in Perl and works in
conjunction with sendmail on UNIX and related operating systems. It
came into widespread use since 1992, predating the popularity of the
web browser, in an era when many people did have access to email but
still didn't have WWW access. As a result, tasks such as subscribing
and unsubscribing are handled by sending mail messages, a process that
may seem cumbersome today.

There are front-ends, such as MajorCool, to provide a web interface.
Many mailing lists still use Majordomo. There is work being done to
completely rewrite Majordomo with a focus on keeping the familiar
email interface while greatly improving the web interface and other
features. This coding effort is referred to as Majordomo 2 and is
currently being used by the OpenBSD project among others.

Before Majordomo, mailing lists were maintained manually, with a list
owner adding and removing participants by editing a text file. Most,
however, moved to commercial mailing list hosting services, often with
a stipend of $100 or more paid to the list owner by the hosting
service in exchange for the transfer. Most of the hosting providers
were subsequently bought out by Yahoo!, and merged into its Yahoo!
Groups service.

A commercial product used during the same era is LISTSERV. Other
open-source mailing list software that gained popularity in recent
years are GNU Mailman and PHPlist. There is mailing list software that
works with qmail, ezmlm (and the improved version, ezmlm-idx).

The current version of Majordomo is 1.94.5, released Jan. 19, 2000.