[AT] RE: New mailing list software

[Chuck Day]

Spencer,

Everything worked fine, keep up the good work......


Chuck Day
SoCal


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-antique-tractor at newidea.atis.net
[mailto:owner-antique-tractor at newidea.atis.net] On Behalf Of Spencer Yost
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 9:00 AM
To: antique-tractor at atis.net
Subject: New mailing list software

As most of you know, I have been running Majordomo as my mailing list
software since the inception of Antique-tractor in 1993(1994 for the public
list).   This software has served me well and was the gold-standard for
mailing list management software in its' day.   Unfortunately very little
additional work has been done on Majordomo by the maintainers since the late
nineties and the software is beginning to show its age.    There are
problems with performance, and the digesting is nearly an impossible amount
of work if you are serious about protecting the list against SPAM.  Although
Majordomo and Listserv set the standard for many years their methods for
subscribing and unsubscribing are, to novice computer users, non-intuitive
and are not entirely self evident.

All of these things have brought me to the point where I have decided to
switch mailing list software.   I have chosen Mailman, an open source GNU
licensed product that is well respected in the IT industry (see
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/inthenews.html for more info).  I think
it will cut way down on the subscription and un-subscription requests and
problems and will certainly be faster (though how much faster remains to be
seen).

What does this mean?   I am looking for a good set of guinea pigs and since
antique-tractor list members have a long and proud history of helping me
test leading edge (bleeding edge???) technology, I was hoping antique
tractor members could help me once again by trying out the new software and
provide feedback - just to give me the thumbs up or thumbs down on this
software.  You can do this by subscribing to and using the new mailing list.
THE CURRENT LIST will stay in place and operate as always for now while we
test and use the new softyware.  To begin playing with the software, just
click on the following link:

http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at

For documentation and further information, visit:

http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman-member.pdf

After you have had time to poke around and post a few test messages, please
post your questions, comments, criticisms, suggestions and compliments on
the the NEW list.   The new list, at first, will be used for discussions
about the software and I will be closely monitoring it and will respond to
anything posted there.  I also don't want to swamp the current list with
messages about the new list.

After enough users have tested it out and made enough comments, I will make
a decision as to stick with Mailman, try something else new, or even keep
Majordomo.

Thanks and have fun!

Spencer Yost
Owner - ATIS
yostsw at atis.net


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