When Dale's term as state coordinator is up/expired/retired/whatever,
will the new state person have to get new email list for the group?
There is also Yahoo groups email, PA uses that, if it becomes necessary
to move eventually.
Personally I prefer no attachments.
Sheila
Dale Grimm wrote:
The only messages I get from the list (as an administrator) is
unsubscribed
users trying to post. And it's usually the same spam everyone gets. I have
yet to receive a request for information from the list. I get a lot through
the website, but not through the list.
That is not the reason I think a change is necessary.
There have been a lot of changes in Rootsweb over the past year. It is no
longer owned by people with a passion for genealogy. It is owned by venture
capitalists whose only purpose is to show a profit. Rootsweb is not a
profit-generating operation. It is a drain on Ancestry's resources. The
reason for the banners and the url changes is to drive more traffic to
Ancestry.com - and to improve their rankings. When they changed the URL's
to
rootsweb.ancestry.com, Ancestry.com's Alexa rankings dramatically
increased. Visitorship to
ancestry.com more than doubled. Rootsweb
apparently was getting more visitors than Ancestry.
As soon as Rootsweb is no longer conceived as a PR asset for Ancestry, all
free services will be discontinued.
I have never relied on free services. I pay for my servers. I pay for my
internet connection. And both are through smaller companies that value my
business more than a large conglomerate would. If I have a problem with the
server, I call the NOC and it's usually resolved within minutes. Same with
my ISP. I pay a little more, but I get better service.
I have been trying to get passwords for abandoned OHGenWeb sites from
Rootsweb since April and have yet to receive any response from them.
If the mailing list is on our own domain on my server, we have complete
control. We can create whatever mailing lists we want. We don't have to
petition Rootsweb.
Both lists are powered by Mailman, so there would be no difference in their
operation.
Dale
Internet Access is only $8.99 per month at
KBAnet.com
-----Original Message-----
From: ohgen-bounces(a)rootsweb.com [mailto:ohgen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On
Behalf Of Denny Shirer
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 11:41 PM
To: ohgen(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: [OHGENWEB] OHGenWeb Mailing List
Sandy,
I have been a Rootsweb list admin for many many years. The Gateway is a way
of connecting a message board with a related mailing list and since we do
not have a related message board, we do not have a gateway. That would be
the wrong terminology for what you are describing.
Yes, Rootsweb's mailing lists are indexed through their internal search
engine and yes lists sometimes do get messages sent from people who found
something through a search and are not subscribed but there is a big
difference to the admin between them and real list messages from subscribed
users. A list admin can choose to micro manage the list and deal with
everything that comes in or set up his/her mail box so that all the
extraneous emails are either deleted or sent to another folder to be dealt
with at their leisure. I have mine set up so all bounces and administrative
messages go to a separate folder and it is a life saver.
98% of those messages do not need any response and depending on how you set
up your filters, you can actually just delete all messages from someone who
is not subscribed. It is not an admin's duty to respond to all unsubscribed
queries. Most do it out of courtesy but as far as our list goes, someone who
is not subscribed does not need to get a response unless they are
continuously posting and becoming a nuisance, IMHO.
I know if someone has never done this before it can seem overwhelming but it
seems Dale knows what he is doing. When we elect a new SC, having some
knowledge of maintaining a list should be one of the things we consider
before casting our vote. Sandy, I know you had never done it before at least
on the scale of this list so I can understand that you may have been a bit
overwhelmed.
Creating a new list would get rid of all the garbage posts but there is no
reason to do that as they can be dealt with easily. As far as USGenWeb is
concerned, an SC is required to admin the state list but there are no
guidelines for how they do it except to make sure that all county admins are
subscribed and that they forward items of interest to the list. If the SC
wants to ignore all unsubscribed messages, that is certainly their right.
I understand an SC wanting to make sure that everyone who is doing research
in our state is not ignored but it would be very easy to create a mail
template to respond to them telling them that OHGEN is not used for research
but Ohio coordinator business and then direct them to whatever message board
or list is handled by the county they are interested in or to the generic
state board and/or list.
Change is not a bad thing when it is necessary or will improve things but
change for change's sake is not worth the time and effort. Changing lists is
not improving anything, it would just make the admin's job a little easier
and that is not enough reason to move this list!
Denny Shirer - drdx(a)neo.rr.com - Canton, OH Shirer Family Genealogy -
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mysong
Muskingum County, OHGenWeb -
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohmuskin/
Sandra Quinn wrote:
> Maybe many don't realize that our emails to the list are gatewayed on
> rootsweb/ancestry and the owner of the list gets lots of confusing
> email. The owner is the state coordinator who is asked to do a lot of
> genealogy research because of it and try to sort out why they are
> getting emails from people not on our private list. It was recently
> discovered that rootsweb gateways the list to their search engine
> which explained all the miscellaneous email. The new list email
> address will still be archived for us to see, just won't be an
> ancestry/rootsweb gateway'd server. It is just a list anyways for all
> of us to communicate. As long as the state coordinator is current with
> our addresses there really is no difference in how the list works. It
> is still a mailman list. It will be quite easy to send emails to the
> new email address and quite easy to see the archives also. I realize
> people are resistant to change but sometimes change is good.
>
> Sandy
>
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>
>
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