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From: "Ranulf Doswell" <ralf@digitalasylum.co.uk>
To: <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Annoying commercial messages!
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 12:17:15 +0100
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You know, I still don't see what people's problems are with BritDisc. True,
I've still never got round to making the archive site more friendly, and
have little motivation to do this at present (it was hacked together quickly
because after about 9 months, someone wanted something they'd deleted). If
anyone wants to do a proper archive, I have a copy of all messages from
about the 40th.

eGroups and all the rest won't offer you the advantages you think you'll
get. It certainly won't prevent spam. In fact, it'll probably make you more
open to spam as the mailing address is so much easier to find. And it'll
certainly force you to look at advertising chosen by eGroups and every
message will have the usual eGroups advertising at the bottom.

All mail coming to Britdisc is filtered through Warwick's spam filters, so
most spam will be rejected before it even gets near the list. In addition,
BritDisc is set up so that only members of the list can post.

Also the limit of 40k per message is intentional - I deliberately set that
up so that people wouldn't send Word documents to the list. It can be
increased, but most people don't want to receive big mails as they're
connecting from dial-up. I've seen this touted as a limitation of BritDisc.
It is not.

In fact, all you gain by moving to eGroups is by having a "pretty" web
interface to subscribe and manage the list. Most intelligent people can
follow the subscription instructions, and managing the list only needs to be
done by one person. This is all offset by having to make sure that everyone
remembers to subscribe to the new group. And everyone having to use a web
browser to change their account subscription.

Yes, perhaps moving BritDisc to a more announcement role, and creating a
discussion forum would be good. But I don't think eGroups is the way to go
on that front; basically I'm opposed to having advertising subsidising our
essentially private mail, when there are enough options for us doing it
within the British Ultimate community. I'm going to look at available
packages for a discussion mailing lists.

Ralf
--
Ranulf Doswell, Digital Asylum Limited
Phone:  024 7663 2767 (intl +4424 7663 2767)
Fax:    024 7663 4370 (intl +4424 7663 4370)
Mobile: 07968 199 662 (intl +4479 6819 9662)


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk
> [mailto:owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk]On Behalf Of British Ultimate
> Federation
> Sent: 18 September 2000 19:27
> To: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Annoying commercial messages!
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> When I get around to it, I intend to look at a replacement for Britdisc,
> something along the lines of a premium Egroups, Smartgroups or Listbot
> account. Because we know there are people out there who want to be kept
> informed but would prefer to miss out on the flame wars we are considering
> splitting Britdisc into two separate lists. One would be purely for the
> debating society and the other would be an announcement-only list.
>
> Does this meet with everyone's approval?
>
> Cheers
>
> Ben Ravilious
> Secretary
> British Ultimate Federation
>