Ron wrote:

>I have been lurking here for a couple of weeks now (more than tripling my
>Email volume).  I've been learning a great deal, but still have some
>questions.  The reason I've been lurking is that I plan to start a new
>non-profit, religious organization.  Among other things, I hope for it to
>have both a web page and a discussion list.
>
>Question number one:  Obviously, you folks have opted to run your own
>lists.  Could some of you explain why you decided to do so, rather than
>hiring one of the list hosts that are available?  My guess is that it has
>something to do with money and probably also with more precise control of
>your list.

First off, this assumption is not entirely valid.  I believe that I am not
alone ion saying that I do not host my own list, I merely manage how it is
run and the policies and guidelines which go into running my list.  My
list is hosted at maelstrom.stjohns.edu which isn't even in the same state
as drew.drew.edu (although it isn't that far away either...)  However,
money certainly was an issue for me, and that said, i posted a message to
(I think it was) this list and recieved a response back offering me alist
over at stjohns.edu and everything from there has been fairly smooth.

>I also suspect that for some of you there's a hobby value.

For some of us, your probably right.  For me, it was simply a matter of
making the organisation and operation of my group e-mail run a lot
smoother.  When my group approched upwards of 10 e-mail addresses, it
became difficult to make sure that everybodsy was always included at the
recieving of the e-mail, and thus the choice to go with a list.

>I'm also curious why you've opted not to go with Majordomo or one of the
>others.

I have had some experience with Macjordomo (the Macintosh equivalent of
Majordomo) and found it rather clunky on a few things.  When Macjordomo
was set up to work with topics, and an additional configuration was set up
by the list maintainer for easy distribution (as it was all done
manually by software constraints...I do not know if Majordomo is similar in
this or not) along with the fact that it seemed like all commands were
sent to the same address as the actual messages to be distributed to the
list.  This was rather confusing to me on a few occasions when I happened
to have a message which unknowingly began with a command word which
Macjordomo refused to process due to list settings which would have
forbidden me to have access to that command.

>What advice do you have for someone wanting to start a list when he doesn't
>know beans about it?  Forget it?

If you want to start a list on listserv, its fairly simple to do, thanks
in large part to the available documentation which I found incredibly
useful and easy to read and understand.  (My sincere compliments to you
folks over at L-Soft who put those together.)

First, you need to find a place willing to host your list.  If you are
unable to do so for free, you may need to pay a nominal fee either per
month or per message.  Different hosts have different guidelines covering
the fees for their use of lists.

>**********************
>Ronald (Ron) Kriesel
>[log in to unmask]
>**********************

Anyway, thats my 2 cents worth.  Hope it helps.

Glenn Alperin
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