In a message dated 10/16/2001 11:11:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time,

<< Unless Internet Forum software has changed dramatically in the past year or
two, most of it **sucks** from an admin side and requires a dedicated server
to handle running the software (which in turn requires a hosting service of
some sort). I have no idea what costs John is covering for the current
services of MAPUG, but changing to a Internet Forum would require some form
of subscription costs to be paid by the users - I'm sure John would not be
willing to pay for it out of only _his_ pocket..

As far as being able to archive messages, that could be handled now through
the MAPUG Web site. But it is a very time-intensive task to convert email
messages into a searchable database, particularly when they contain lots of
useless repetitive HTML code for the message texts. The other downside to
switching to Yahoo/Internet Forums are the spam-hounds they attract. Having
worked as a Sysop in online Forums on CompuServe for close to four years,
and an Internet Forum for six months or so, I can tell you what a pain it is
to cover the admin of these things..

Leave MAPUG as-is. It works just fine!

-Doug >>


Despite the maddening quirks of a Majordomo list like this, my short- and
intermediate-term plans are to stay with it as a privately held list.
Short-term, it will remain of a list-host scale for the list, and a web-host
scale for the website, rather than of a dedicated-server scale for each,
either, or both.

I do agree that it would be very nice to add our own full email-archiving
capability beyond what we currently have.

And YES, we do already have access to every post for over the last 5 years.
It's just not very convenient or searchable! In a way, this is good, because
it slightly hinders spammers. But it's also bad, because anything which
isn't enough of "a highlight of accumulated knowledge" doesn't make it into
the MTA, nor should it.

Somewhere inbetween the current system of retrieving individual digests by
number... and an archive of individual emails easily searchable by the
general public from any search engine, must lie a reasonable solution.

One or more of the following projects might help:

1. First, and most necessary: Download the text of all the old digests to a
hard drive, and burn a few CDs of it. This will prevent the loss of our full
history of posts since 1996 if/when I move the list to a different list
hosting service. Maybe someone wants to volunteer to do this project, and
even burn a CD of it for me. Better yet, two people should do this, to
double-check for errors.

Optional:
2. Break out the individual posts.
3. Fix all the "Re: [M] Re:[M]" stuff to accurately re-create what thread
each post was intended for.
4. Remove HTML, other garbage characters in posts.
5. Remove or index/flag flaming posts, offensive material, etc.
6. Classify topics/content/details of posts by several criteria
7. Map email addresses to authors (a lot of people changed addresses!!!)
8. Index posts by thread, author, date, topic classification, rating,
version, equipment, software version, etc.
9. Rate posts, authors, threads, etc. by several criteria
10. Etc.

I think that most totally-automated schemes for throwing stuff onto the Web
are useful (e.g., find all posts mentioning "derotator" before 1/1/1999) but
nowhere near as useful as value-added info provided by users themselves
(e.g., find all posts classified as "derotator-related" before 1/1/1999,
sorted first by quartile of usefulness, then by technical reputation of
poster, eliminating any pertaining to only 16" scopes) if we're willing to
build up an interlocking scheme of feedback, classification, ranking,
linking, etc.

Another thing to think about is possibly making some portion of the material
in such archives available to list subscribers only, maybe offering
archive-opt-out on posts (which might also mean disallowing some/all
third-party archives ), and other difficult issues.

There are many trade-offs regarding accessibility, usefulness, convenience,
openness, security, privacy, accountability, identity verification, etc.
They've been on the back burner for a long time as the "good times rolled"
and abuses were minimal, but the long-dreaded tightening can probably be
expected in 2002.

John
MAPUG list admin.

Excuse the long signature: from "Miami 2017" by Billy Joel, 1976

I saw the lights go out on Broadway
I watched the mighty skyline fall.
The boats were waiting at the Battery,
The union went on strike
They never sailed at all.
They sent a carrier out from Norfolk
And picked the Yankees up for free.
They said that Queens could stay,
They blew the Bronx away
And sank Manhattan out to sea...

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