On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Te Chih Liu wrote: > I'm predominantly a "lurker" rather than an active contributor but I > second the comments above. The number of queries are and responses are > quite big and the mail-box is sometimes overwhelmed, especially if you've > just returned from a koliday. I'm wondering if the administrators who're > doing a wonderful job with this forum have considered moving this into a > Usenet newsgroup. That would be less exclusive since anyone can gain > access to the group but it has some advantages: > a) messages of the same thread are grouped together > b) Postings of the recent past can still be read (at leisure) > c) the reader can focus only on the threads he/she's interested in and > choose to disregard the rest. There was some discussion about this at the last ISAC meeting in Colorado Springs and, if I am right, the general feeling that moving to Usenet would be a counter-productive move. The way things are at the moment means that we are not swamped with adverts or UCE and the list administrators have a degree of control over what we see (And a big Thank you to them for that too). With the appropriate mail reader it is possible to filter all the list messages to one folder and easy enough to scan the headers to find the mail one is most interested in. In addition there is still the archived messages on the Web where messages can be viewed by thread. I know that it is possible to have a moderated newsgroup but on the downside, for me personally, my newsfeed is provided by an Academic network and articles are only kept on the server for a limited period so after a holiday I would have missed a number of posts.(And, hey, I *like* getting mail!) Although the list messages are sent to list members the archive provides a universal resource to which I have often directed people in the more general Bionet newsgroup hierarchy. However, this is an interesting point so what does everyone else feel? Derek **************************************************************************** * Derek Davies Voice: (44) 0171 269 3394 * * FACS Laboratory, FAX: (44) 0171 269 3100 * * Imperial Cancer Research Fund, e_mail: derek.davies@icrf.icnet.uk * * London, UK * * * * Web Page: http://www.icnet.uk/axp/facs/davies/index.html * ****************************************************************************
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