[Lowfer] New List

[John Davis]

>
>Since I like to receive everything by mail and not web sites, I created a
>mail list on YAHOO called Lowfer_Notice. It is my experience, from the
other
>groups I run there, that it is easy to use and, more importantly, very
>reliable and FAST.
>
>I would like to it to be a list where beacon owners can post all the
changes
>to their operation that we, the listeners, need to be aware of.
>Additionally, I would encourage reports of band openings, contacts, etc. We
>can leave all the tech talk where it is  8-)
>
>I don't want to discount, or undercut, the excellent work done by John, Les
>and the others. I would suggest that you continue to use those forums. But
>if you want to send or receive beacon info or band reports via e-mail
>without waiting 48 hours, you are welcome to use the group. Or not.


WHAT 48 hours?  That's the beauty of a Web board...it's immediate, you
receive confirmation that your message is there, and it's available to
anyone for a month or more, even if they are newcomers or their own ISP's
mail server was down for a while or any of the scores of other reasons
e-mail doesn't always get through.

I realize that a lot of people share your preference for "everything by
e-mail," Mike, even though I don't understand it myself.  But deep down, I
feel your proposal does amount to an invitation to abandon this current
list.  Although there is some non-beacon LF technical discussion here from
time to time, most of the posting to this list is about techniques for
transmission and reception of the very beacon changes that are being posted
here too.  These are almost inseparable.

Seems to me the hobby is already fragmenting into way too many niche e-mail
groups.  Les and I have to monitor about as many as we can handle now, and I
have to believe that's probably true of a lot of other members whose
interests extend beyond a single area of longwave.

How many more lists should we have to follow, when each new beacon-related
idea that comes along diverts people's attention from simple things like
remembering to inform the publicly available master lists of their changes?
(This point is kind of a sore one with me, as just such a situation arose
this fall shortly before I could introduce a system that would've allowed
automatic updating of the LWCA web and print lists by beacon operators
themselves, ALONG WITH automatic posting to the LW Message Board and this or
any other list if we got its moderator's permission.  I won't have time to
work on it again until next fall now, by which time...who knows?  Maybe
there'll be separate mail lists for each mode of operation?)

It seems to me that if niches are the way the hobby is developing, we still
at least need a central "gathering place" where people can meet and find out
what and where those niches currently are, and maybe view a sample of what's
going on in them.  This is a concept I call "rolling digests," where readers
could view the last few days' postings to a variety of lists--although they
couldn't post, of course, unless they subscribed to them individually.  This
would be a relatively simple matter with list owners' cooperation, with
their lists still hosted right where they are now; and that's just one of
MANY ways we could be making more use of the LWCA server, if we weren't such
a collection of stoic individualists, and/or taking the quick fix and
jumping ship for what is fundamentally a temporary problem.  (Majordomo took
a while to get going, too, remember.)

There is perhaps a little incongruity in my defending this very list, a
quasi-competitor to the LW Message Board, but the users of both finally
found an equilibrium that worked.  Now do we have to find a new equilibrium
point again?  Do we abandon this list, or have to accept yet more
fragmentation of our information sources?

Well, that's all my venting for today.  Thoughts, please?

John Davis