Subject: Re: [lojban] where the mailing lists lie

From: lojbab <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 23:22:12 -0400

At 06:59 PM 4/18/02 -0600, Jay Kominek wrote:
>On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, G. Dyke wrote:
> > If you wish to have any say on the matter, vote now on yahoo voting system.
>
>It is also worth pointing out that there are a number of people who cannot
>vote to move the lists, because they've already voted by refusing to have
>anything to do with Yahoo.
>
>There are at least 3 people of which I'm aware. (I'm fairly confident that
>there isn't any overlap, etc) So when interpreting the results of the
>voting, please keep in mind that the only people who can vote are those
>who find Yahoo Groups sufficently tolerable to join the mailing list.

I'm going to speak up for the other side, since few seem to be doing so.

Not finding Yahoo Groups tolerable is their problem, more than it is 
ours. Whereever we choose to host the list, some will be excluded. It may 
be because they don't like the policy of the hosting site (more common with 
Yahoo), or it may be because they don't find out about the list (less 
common with Yahoo). Some may not like the reply-to policy as well, and 
that also is their problem. We cannot please everyone.

(I don't know who your 3 people are, Jay, but there are certainly many who 
object to Yahoo, some very strongly, but who put up with it anyway because 
they want or even need the content. It'd be nice to avoid the ads, but we 
are getting good service and free advertising of our own.)

I was initially reluctant to go to Yahoo, because it was commercial, but 
Cowan convinced me that there would be positive tradeoffs in terms of long 
term stability, advertising (people finding out about us by list scanning 
or word of mouth), good archiving, etc. He has been correct in his 
evaluation - Lojban List went from roughly 80 members (and shrinking) to 
150 members fairly quickly when we switched, and we are at 273 at the 
moment; yet this number doesn't include the ones who've tried us and left 
for whatever reason. I count 393 subscription messages in my archives 
since we switched to Onelist (which was absorbed by egroups and later 
Yahoo) in 12/99. This doesn't count the beginners list, or any of the 
other lists now hosted on Yahoo.

Other than catering to some people's preferences (and the nature of those 
preferences or the tradeoffs have not really changed since we set up the 
list), I haven't seen anyone post any actual *advantages* that we would 
gain by hosting it at lojban.org, and we would lose the advertising and the 
relatively convenient interface. And we might split the community, since 
I've noticed that darn near every other list that I've been on has one or 
more parallel lists on Yahoo with entirely separate traffic on the same 
subject. I already have trouble keeping track of what list I am posting to.

Personally, considering that we are a charity organization that is not even 
managing to break even with donations (there are a lot of you out there who 
support us by buying books, but that isn't enough to cover the operating 
costs of the organization - donations have actually been smaller in the 
last couple of years despite all the increases in activity), I think we 
have done remarkably well in minimizing the amount of commercialization 
that we have had to deal with. Unless some big donors (or lots more little 
donors) start showing up to pay off the LLG debts and operating costs, ads 
are going to creep in somehow. (But we won't sell our mailing list; I will 
stick to that commitment as long as I have the power to do so).

The bottom line is that people can go ahead and vote in a poll, but Lojban 
List policy is too important to the organization to be decided by 
poll. Thus issues of list management will be decided by Cowan (and me) in 
our executive capacity, pending any discussion or policy change decision by 
the voting membership at the annual meeting during LogFest (the voting 
members can of course change any LLG policy within legal and bylaw 
constraints %^).

lojbab