Steven,

One caveat re. Google Groups - if you paste in everyone's email addresses
and submit it all at once, the list will go into a holding area for Google
to review (I'm not sure what the limit is, but I ran across it at around 40
or so once).

However, this presents no problem whatsoever, other than that instead of
"within minutes" we're talking "within a day or so". The primary reason for
this is to prevent spammers from creating large groups on Google and sending
out crap. I personally like this approach and give kudos to Google for
implementing it.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Hodge [mailto:stevehodge@speakeasy.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 1:24 PM
To: Baba, Panda and Tashiba
Subject: [baba] new baba list/forum

Ok, I've decided to jump into the snake pit, address pros & cons, and
suggest a very specific solution to be implemented today. Unfortunately
this posting is long, but I saw no way to condense it significantly.

Our new home basically boils down to a choice of a DIY solution or a "Group"
solution, specifically meaning Yahoo, MSN, Google, sailboatowners, or
something similar. Sailboatowners is basically a pre-subscription SailJazz
look-alike as near as I can tell and operates, from our "user" point of
view, essentially like the other groups, so I'll just lump them all
together.

To help evaluate the pros & cons, I decided last night, after casting my
"vote", to check out exactly what was involved in these groups, setting one
up, etc., and thus hopefully get a better feel for them, in addition to the
positive one I have experienced with Puget Sound Cruising Club on MSN Groups
over the past few years. So I went to Google Groups, on the basis of Mark
Kaynor's positive appraisal, to check it out and see if I could get a first
hand idea of its pros & cons. It took me all of about 5 minutes to set up a
group, and test it by posting something to it. After that, somehow I
accidentally came across a similar Google Group, one set up by Ken Pearce
last Saturday, the day after the SailJazz bomb. Ken also that same day set
up a similar one on Yahoo Groups, and published the url here on this list.

This demonstrates that although Cindy & Richard's test of Cindy's List
yesterday was relevant it was nonetheless redundant. Ken had already done
it two days earlier!

Both the DIY and any of the above Group solutions (with one caveat
concerning copyright) give us the following advantages, taken from my list
of "desires" posted yesterday:

1. A forum to exchange information & ideas using a text-based email-type
distribution (a la Baba-L).

2. A forum which is free.

3. A forum that is ad/popup-free, or at least can be configured by you to be
so.

4. A forum that is free of copyright issues, at least with the Google Groups
and DIY. I'm not sure about Yahoo or MSN.

The Group solution and *probably" the DIY solution also give the following
additional advantages (I say "probably" because I don't know the DIY details
of what is being proposed, but I give the benefit of the doubt and include
them):

5. A forum which is optionally web-based.

6. An unmoderated/uncensored/self-regulating forum.

7. The ability to exchange files, up to some size limit (1 MB at Google
Groups). (More on this later.)

Ok, now the snake pit. Here are the additional advantages of a Group
solution which the DIY solution either clearly does not have or there is
good reason to suspect it does not have:

8. A forum which is run & maintained professionally by a party outside our
group, meaning specifically that this party, not one of us, takes care of
all operational issues (spam, viruses, ISP's, broken machines, etc).

9. A forum which does not impose on any of us, warranted or not, a "guilty"
feeling induced because another of us is doing unpaid work on all our
behalf, which has the potential (witness Baba-L) to be very frustrating and
time-consuming at times. I can speak only for myself here, but I really do
not want to be "beholden" to someone else when there is a viable
alternative.

10. A forum which runs, at least in theory, 24/7, 365.242199 days a year.

11. A forum which gives us far better "visibility" to the outside world.
With a group such as Google you can (again this is optional) be included in
the Google search universe. This would make it far easier for newcomers to
find us. I found the original Baba-L 6 years ago from Dennis's
site...which, by the way, still points to the old Baba-L.

12. A forum which gives us an instant archive and search capability on all
the postings done to it. (Perhaps one of the DIY solutions can do this
also. If so, consider this point up in the previous section.)

I know some of the DIY supporters may dispute one or more of these.
However, simply saying there won't be any hitches or problems, and it will
run flawlessly forever, including in the absence of the DIY administrator,
is, I'm afraid, not good enough in light of the seeming never-ending
problems Rick E had. Simply saying you won't have the same problems, or
waving your arms and giving this or that reason why things will be
different, just doesn't cut it. Our track record is the opposite. The rest
of us, if I can extrapolate from myself and a few others who have voiced
similar concerns on the list, would need proof of this, and unfortunately
one would need to run the DIY list for a year or more to prove your point.
The "rest of us", if I may speak for them, don't want to take that risk
when--and this is the crux of the matter--there is a perfectly viable easy
alternative which avoids this potential issue completely, once & for all.

OK, that said, what are advantages of the DIY approach over the Group one?
The only real, logical ones I can think of are two ones presumed on my part.
I don't really know if they are in fact doable, but I'm assuming they are:

12. The ability to exchange/archive large, virtually unlimited in size,
files. This differs from #7 only in that there is no size limit here (or a
limit unlikely to be reached in practise).

13. The ability to archive all our OLD postings (any of the Groups above
automatically takes care of archiving what is posted through them). This
assumes that someone who has already saved and archived them would be
willing to donate them and that the DIY administrator would be willing to
set up some sort of searchable archive.

These are definite advantages. I for one would like to see them. However,
as we did not have them with Baba-L, and only had #12 with SailJazz (and I
found it so cumbersome to use I never did use it), these are really
"add-ons" and, moreover, can be dealt with separately. More on this below.

Are there other advantages of DIY? Yes, there probably are to the DIY
administrator, as no doubt they view it as a hobby and just plain like and
want to do it. Fair enough. BUT to the rest of us, all the "users" of the
forum? Frankly, no, I can't see any. Instead all I forsee is potential
negatives to us, namely #8 to #10 above.

Finally, I am placing absolutely zero weight on the emotional reasons, ie,
being against using a Group just because it's a Group or because it is
associated with some entity that for personal reasons you have something
against. Sorry, you need logical justifiable reasons. If you have them,
state them, but so far no one has. The one about ads & popups on Groups is
simply not true if you choose to use email-only; in fact, I have learned in
my investigating that I was incorrect when I said that about Yahoo Groups.

Well I think it should be pretty plain by now that I have come down strongly
on the side of going with a Group, specifically, in fact, Google Groups.
Basically, it's a no-brainer. All the advantages stack up on the Group
side, with NO disadvantages, except for the lack of the add-ons, #12 and
#13. If you wish to dispute this, do so, but please do so with
verifiable--not presumed--facts, or, worse, wishful thinking.

I add at this point support for this conclusion in the fact that a Yahoo
Group is what the Valiant list went to, as I mentioned repeatedly before.
One of the people who set it up "invented Internet Banking" (so he claims
and I have no reason to dispute this). Once again, I repeat, if they chose
a group, why not us too?

The long and the short of all this is why reinvent the wheel? We have a
virtually ideal wheel already available to us, free and professionally run,
that provides us with all our core requirements, and then some.

Here then is my suggested solution to our stalled situation:

A. Dump the ballot/vote thing I tried to instigate yesterday. The number of
people voting so far is still statistically insignificant (but thank you to
all those who did vote). Let's quit screwing around and instead get
something up and running NOW, like the Valinat list has done.

B. Go with the Google Group I just set up. The email address is
BabaList@googlegroups.com. I suggest mine rather than the one Ken set up
simply because I can't find Ken's any more. Somehow I got lucky last night.
If Cindy would be so kind as to email me a text-based list of all our
addresses I can cut 'n paste them in and we will be all on the list in a
matter of minutes. The only thing you need to do is, if you don't already
have a registered account with Google, you need to make one. This is
extremely easy to do, and it is typically something you have to do these
days each time you make an online order, namely enter a password. By
default Google sets everyone up for plain email-based exchange (ie, not
web-based) so unless you want to change that you don't need to really do
anything else. We can be all up and running today and wave bye-bye to
SailJazz.

C. The DIY'ers get together, if they so wish, and set up an independent site
where we can do one or both of #12 and #13. This is the approach Tayana
uses, I think.

D. I hand off "ownership" of this Group to someone else, or if it can be
done (I'm not sure on this point) we set up more than one "owner". I am
willing to be a co-owner, or alternate ownership, but not the sole owner
forever. Transferring ownership is very easily done, and this aspect should
make this particular solution very attractive to us sailboaters, because we
all really should be off sailing, at least at some time during the year,
right?

I suggest and hope that Cindy would perhaps take over. Despite her being on
the DIY side, she has been very gracious and fair in her postings. (Thanks,
Cindy.)

Finally, a word about copyright. Google Groups does indeed, as Mark Kaynor
posted, not impose any copyright restrictions on what we post. In fact,
they very clearly say they don't want to have anything to do with it.
However, Alan, I would like you to check this aspect out if you care to. I
tediously read through all their lawyerese but couldn't find anything that I
thought we would find troublesome. This copyright aspect is the big reason
I did not seriously include sailboatowners in the list of possible Groups.

Steve






_/)..._/)..._/)
Browse Archives: http://www.sailjazz.com/listmanager
Get Help? http://www.sailjazz.com/listmanager/help/intro
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-253158-26402G@list.sailjazz.com
_/)...._/)...._/)...._/)


_/)..._/)..._/)
Browse Archives: http://www.sailjazz.com/listmanager
Get Help? http://www.sailjazz.com/listmanager/help/intro
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-253171-7798K@list.sailjazz.com
_/)...._/)...._/)...._/)

Received on Tue Nov 01 10:52:26 2005