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Everyone, Please forgive me for double posting this. I ask that the replies be made to the coupers-tech forum so everybody can be involved. We've long been grateful for Tom Laird-McConnell's creation of Coupe forums and his continued hosting of them (at his own expense), even years after he sold his own Coupe. (That's class!) Perhaps it is time to move the mail lists over to another source. Tom has kept us up and running as well as any private person could. When he's had hardware problems, he's rushed out to get replacements quickly, as a service to us, rather than at his own convenience. Nevertheless, because of Tom's travels, we've had a couple of week-long outages in the last year and a half and several short outages. Tom is busy and is no longer a Coupe owner. He's agreeable to our moving the lists elsewhere and I think we ought to get about it. Though I looked at the Google forum hosting system, I didn't find it as easy as Yahoo's. I've tried to participate in web-based-only forums but found them to be not 10% as convenient as e-mail based systems. So, I've created two forums on Yahoo to mirror those we are used to. I'd like to ask you all to vote on whether you would like to make the move now. The last time I asked, only a handful of people replied. Would you please consider it seriously now? If the consensus is to move, we'll shut off the old forums after a bit. If you really object to moving, we can keep imposing on Tom for a while longer. Advantages to moving to Yahoo: 1. The list owner will be involved in the lists. (At this time, the list owner is me. I'll be willing to pass on ownership as appropriate. I'll also look for ways to automatically transfer ownership of the list (or have joint-ownership) so if something were to happen to me there would be no list management problems. 2. We'll have several moderators who will watch for spam, flame wars and other inappropriate content and solve list problems. 3. The lists will be supported by a huge server farm with really good reliability. 4. If the Yahoo mail server gets a "hard bounce" from your own e-mail server it inactivates that e-mail account. Note that this is no different from Tom's e-mail server. But, with Yahoo, you can just go to the e-mail preferences and do the "unbounce" procedure and it'll fix you up. That's easier than doing the similar process with Tom's server. 5. With several moderators, we can set the options to moderate new members' messages for a message or two to watch for and screen out spammers. By having several moderators, the delay of this will be, we hope, not too obnoxious. 6. Tom's server uses older software that doesn't understand some changes to Internet e-mail address headers. Thus, 10-30 current list members are unable to post to the list because Tom's software thinks their messages are faulty. Yahoo is up to date and everyone should be able to post messages and participate fully. Downsides to moving to Yahoo: 1. Many of you will have to create a Yahoo account. Fortunately, Yahoo seems to take privacy fairly seriously. I've never found any spam attributable to Yahoo leaking my information. If you want to keep your info private, put bogus info in the information fields when you sign up - they just need the valid e-mail address. 2. Even Yahoo isn't perfect, maybe far from it, but they do pretty well. At busy times of the week, there are sometimes long delays in e-mail messages getting posted to the list - more so than we saw with Tom's server. But, it's rare for messages to be lost. With Yahoo, as with Tom's, you may read the messages (and post) on the website, by receiving individual e-mails or by getting a daily digest. So, please discuss this proposal and let's decide if we're going to move or stay put. It's your choice, gals and guys! Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com ed -at- edburkhead???.com (change -at- to @ and remove "???") To join the lists on Yahoo, you'd go to these websites: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ercoupe-flyin http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ercoupe-tech To send e-mail to the lists, you'd just address it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] as appropriate. I've set the "reply-to" option the same as we have with Tom's lists - by default, when you hit "reply-to" your response will be addressed to the sender of the original message. This cuts down a LOT on trivial "me-to" responses and crosstalk that belongs on a direct reply to the sender. But it does, like on Tom's list, require you to put the e-mail address in the address line. (Note: I've found that if I put an entry in my e-mail program's address book with the name of "et" and another with "ef" then I can just type those two letters and my program will fill in the actual e-mail address by automatic lookup. It works for the three e-mail programs I use so it'll probably work for yours, too.) Here's the group description: Ercoupe, Aircoupe and Mooney M-10 aircraft are a beautiful, classic design. Originated in 1939 for initial production in 1941 and mass production in 1946, variants of the Coupe were made by Forney, Alon and Mooney up through 1970. Coupe owners share useful techniques and critical information concerning owning and flying these wonderful aircraft. Those interested in Ercoupes and Aircoupes should> be members of both ercoupe-flyin and ercoupe-tech. Everyone should be a member of -tech. Those who do not want the social and semi-off-topic content should join -tech only. The -flyin forum is open but intended for Coupe related social and general content. should be reserved for the ercoupe-flyin forum. This forum is for social and semi-off-topic content. We do not ban technical topics from this forum but we urge you to post them on ercoupe-tech instead. The -tech forum is restricted to Ercoupe/Aircoupe/Mooney M-10 technical information and aviation technique, safety about maintaining and flying Coupes. New members will be temporarily moderated to block spam. We reserve the right to moderate all messages to stay on-topic and eliminate flame-wars. We treasure our friendly and collegial atmosphere. We encourage the participation of young people and ask that all members keep this forum clean, just as you should speak in front of your own grandchildren. ============================================================================== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
