The future of IGSRBIN

Hello all,

> If this group is closing and another starting up, or if another
> exists that is as good as this one has been, can someone
> please post the information for us all?     Pat

The IGSRobin group/list is NOT closing.

The service provider St John's University is withdrawing the
server (Maelstrom) which provided the facility to run the
hundreds of Groups/Lists based at the University.

So all we have to do is move the List/Group over to an
alternative provider. I put this to all Group members to see
if there are any preferences of where to go and to see what
knowledge any members may have of other providers. In
the past Yahoo! has not been a preference, but that was
when we had Maelstrom. There are currently three new
possibilities, being considered:

Some of the Maelstrom List Owners have got together to try
and set up an alternative for disability and heath based Lists.
There is a fee payable and the List Owner (me) would actually
"own" the List name, which I do not se as a good idea.

There is then YahooGroups which provides lots of additional
facilities, which we have never used before. But all messages
contain adverts, usually inappropriate, and some people have
issues with the way Yahoo! organises the system.

We have been offered the facility to run an active list on the
server of the provider of our message archive. I am at the
moment investigating how it would differ from Maelstrom.
The software would be Majordomo and not Listserv, but
this should not make any difference to ordinary Group/List
members. All the other Groups/Lists already there are
Horticultural/Botanical, there is no fee, messages will not
contain adverts and all the IGSRobin archives since 1997 are
already there and would continue.

The Maelstrom facilities will continue until the end of the month.
I am planning on running the old and new address together for
the last week. If the third option has not worked out by then for
any reason, I will go ahead and transfer everyone over to
YahooGroups.

So no-one should worry about the future of the group/list.
It will continue.

Anyone who wants to contact me directly please feel free to do so.

David Barrett
IGSROBIN List Manager
igsrobin@beeb.net
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