On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Barak Moshe wrote:
> May be, but would you consider that with only 5% of my time dedicated to
> Listserv related tasks, and some 2000 expected list owners, many of whom will
> change each year (they will be academic course assistants) my perspective could
> be different ?

Academic institutions are unique in this regard and I sometimes don't
think the issues are fully appreciated or understood outside these
institutions. People in charge of listserv in academic institutions are so
far down the academic hierarchy, or not even under it (VP-Academic), where
immediate management by design, can only express "We do this in 2 months"
because decisions like "We can do this" have already been made; if you
don't have a savy manager or if you deal ineffectively with your manager,
you're stuck.

The only choice I saw when I was in your situation, Moshe, was to create
an owner support list for them, write a policy that said depts owned their
lists and looked after them while I spent a week writing a web interface
to avoid syntax & use training. I found it far easier to get a policy
passed my manager (after it had been up a few months) then to get an
additional body (that took almost 2 years).  When I contacted Lsoft with
these issues in 1996, it became clear that there were "listserv issues"
(development is clearly a long term view) and "local issues" (I need a
plan now).  I do wish you all the best because I've been there.  Please
feel free to drop me a private note if you think it would help to bounce
around some ideas or strategy.

--Trish

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Trish Forrest, Queen's University