Goodbye mailing list.

[Lawrence Weeks]

Once upon a time (Wed Oct 16), George Roffe wrote:

> Larry, don't do it. While there may be more traffic on the forums
> these days, there is *still* a large number of people who prefer
> the mailing list. Don't judge how much people value the list just
> based upon the volume of traffic.

I've been reconsidering lately...

Understand, I don't *want* to retire the mailing list. But we all
realize that it has fallen *way* off of where it once was. It is
not the primary online watering hole anymore. Our online community,
with many others, has fragmented, in ways that are good and bad. It
used to be that to run a mailing list, one needed resources that the
average person couldn't get. That naturally consolidated things. Then
came the free mailing list sites. Then came $10.00/mo full-blown web
hosting where any joe can run a forum. And so now we have a plethora
of outlets available. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but it
has terribly fragmented us. Personally, I never look at web forums,
I think the technology is incredibly cumbersome for interactive
discussions. Neither do I subscribe to any of the other regional
lists. As a result, I miss out on a lot of things that I wouldn't have
a year or so ago. Those things used to be announced or discussed on
"the" SE-R list, but no longer.

So, while I don't *want* to retire this list, perhaps it *should*
be. Or at least, recognize its new place in the community. It is
no longer "the" SE-R mailing list, just "a" SE-R mailing list, and
never will return to what it was. It is all downhill from here. It
isn't going to get much new blood, and the cool things being done
in our community aren't going to be discussed much, or perhaps even
mentioned, here. It has 877 subscribers today, down from over 1000
at peak. That number falls all the time due to bouncing addresses,
and isn't going up.

With that in mind, my thought has been to make a new mailing list,
something like se-r-old-farts or was-se-r (open to suggestion),
and those who wish to migrate will. But given the direction that the
online community has moved, I will be ceasing to publicly promote the
se-r list. This isn't about money or resources, just about doing what
I think is the best thing to do.

Larry
--
Lawrence Weeks      "Audaces fortuna juvat."      dev@anabasis.net