[Publib] Issues with the PUBLIB mailing list

[Robert Balliot]

Karen,

It is certainly beneficial to OCLC to host the list and have access to all
of the
subscribers email addresses and content.  Offering a server space to handle
the listserve is not big money, nor is it particularly complicated. It is
simply
partitioned space. Calling it 'free' is a bit misleading.  It has
informational and
marketing value to OCLC.  Your comments about them certainly attests to
that.

R. Balliot
On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 3:26 PM, Karen Schneider <kgschneider at gmail.com>wrote:

> PUBLIB, which currently has over 9,000 members and has existed as an
> online community since 1992, has been hosted by Webjunction since
> 2005. They provide this service free of charge, and despite Ballott's
> use of the term "appropriated," the fact is that they offered and we
> accepted. Unfortunately, we all know about the nature of "free," and
> the reality is sometimes responses to problems are slower than we'd
> like.
>
> The last time we had a very big problem (total list stoppage), it was
> 8 days in duration. That's a very long time. I had to elevate the
> problem (actually pulled strings with a friend) and while I'm always
> glad to cash in chips, this is a rather precarious way to support such
> a big community. Afterwards, I was advised third-hand that Webjunction
> really wanted to continue hosting us (since I did pose the
> question)... though the person who transmitted this message oddly
> enough did not share it with me directly.
>
> Two of the chronic problems since we've moved to Webjunction are a)
> inability to post and (to a lesser extent) b) inability to receive
> messages. (Sara and I haven't moderated messages since we moved from
> NYSERNET in 1997, so if a message doesn't appear, there's something
> technically wrong somewhere.) Sometimes this is traced to something
> really simple, like your email address changed but you didn't change
> it on PUBLIB. Other times it's just mystifying. We don't have answers,
> and we probably aren't going to get any. The last time I had trouble
> signing into the list as an administrator (a fairly big problem) I
> never did get an answer... four days later the problem resolved
> itself.
>
> My take? Yes, we should think about migrating (and possibly about a
> different platform, since it's also possible that a list our size, and
> an archive as huge and deep as the one associated with PUBLIB, is
> simply too much for the Mailman software we're on to handle). Yes,
> that involves resources, but I think as a community we can come up
> with a better solution than "beggars can't be choosers." Yes, we
> ourselves don't have deep pockets to do this (at least I don't), but
> we have other things going for us--we're a great resource for the
> world.
>
> Anyway, food for thought -- and for the PUBLIB happy hour?
>
> Karen / PUBLIB co-moderator
>
>
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> http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
>
>
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