VMs: Re: Yahoo -- VMs -- New mailing list address -- possibly short-term

["Don Latham" <djl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

As a very occasional contributor and avid watcher, I think that a Yahoo
board leaves us vulnerable to even more spam and database correlation
nonsense. I simply don't want my many interests accessible to any
organization with a few $ to buy a list.   So, I think "our own board" makes
a good deal of sense.  One of the organizations I belong to, the SETI
league, has its own board. It also has dues.   The amateur radio astronomy
group, SARA, also has its own website, also dues, and seems to have a
perennial problem of website and mailing maintenance.  The Voynich group's
data is spread among many individual sites, maintained by volunteers, with a
few spending their time on behalf of the group. Sorry, I have no answers for
the Voynich state of affairs, but it is certainly not unique.  TANSTAAFL.
Don Latham
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Grove" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Voynich Ms. mailing list" <voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 7:52 PM
Subject: VMs: Re: Yahoo -- VMs -- New mailing list address -- possibly
short-term


> Colour me confused once again... but, couldn't we just build our very own
> bulletin board with our own membership sign in and not use Yahoo? Any
> webhost out there provides enough space to run a board and there are
enough
> free cgi scripts to build a simple or not-so-simple board. The question
> isn't whether we need to be housed on some commercial enterprise that
> flashes ads at you - it's do we want all our conversations exposed to the
> whole world and searchable by google...
> For that matter, we could exclude the webpages of the webboard from being
> indexed by robots etc and nobody could ever find us...
>
> Do we want to be able to view the pages in HTML or do we prefer to use
email
> because we like to download the files from our server onto our computer
for
> later viewing in a text only format? If you haven't guessed yet, I'm
> starting to convince myself that a webboard is a better solution to an
> active discussion group. It can be controlled for
reading/writing/searching
> as required. And it can display in various fonts on various operating
> systems and browsers....
>
> I don't see what the fear of javascript could be -- It's quite a helpful
> scripting language for making the pages do lots of magical things [and
it's
> completely harmless (cookie-abuse market tracking aside)].
>
> John.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jacques Guy" <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "Voynich Ms. mailing list" <voynich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 5:50 AM
> Subject: VMs: Re: Yahoo -- VMs -- New mailing list address -- possibly
> short-term
>
>
> > Just yesterday I stumbled across a Yahoo discussion
> > group (or whatever they call themselves) about
> > Easter Island. I wanted to post an answer to a
> > question put there, but I had to register.
> >
> > After an hour of effort, I gave up in disgust.
> >
> > First, I had to give my country of origin and
> > my postcode. No business of yours, folks, so
> > I clicked on the first country in the list
> > (USA) and entered 123456 as postcode. The wretched
> > thing complained that it was not a valid postcode.
> > My curiosity awakened, I tried Bangladesh. Same
> > story. Mind you, had I wanted to try France, it
> > was not on the list displayed (but Thailand was),
> > I would have had to enable JavaScript first,
> > then click on the link to more countries.
> >
> > Then I was asked my sex. It complained when
> > I left it out.
> >
> > Then my occupation. Thankfully, there was "other".
> >
> > Then my title. It complained when I left it
> > unanswered.
> >
> > Then... I forgot.
> >
> > Finally, I had to choose a member ID. Now there are less
> > than 200 people on that list, so I was surprised when
> > all the IDs I tried were knocked back: already
> > attributed. TeHaha, TeRoro to start with. Then
> > I got sick of my Polynesian names being rejected,
> > and I used some names I had made for myself when
> > playing Ultima VII. Kaa. Already taken. Tskaa.
> > Already taken (what???? yes.). Into Japanese now.
> > Tsurezuregusa. You've guessed: already taken.
> >
> > It was clear by then that your proposed user name
> > was matched against all the members of _all_ their
> > lists.
> >
> > When you add to that the ads which apparently come
> > gracing your mailbox... count me out.
> >
> >
> >
>
>