Chris, The campfire on cave trips?, which is currently substituted for a lantern since 99% of Texas is under a burn ban.
I use and get mail from all the mailing lists that I can sign up for, I also provide a mailing list for the USA and all of the individual states as well as several specific caving areas. ... I also use facebook... I created a group page there for our grotto and let it run for a while and when I went back to it for something, I discovered that since I left it wide open for membership it has several spam messages on it, I deleted them and the offending members and now it is a closed group. rarely does anyone use it for any PBSS related communicating. I am signed up for the NSS Cave Chat and NSS forums but I tended to lose interest after a while. I found it kind of cumbersome to navigate and the folks that I wanted to chat with or knew were not on there and wouldn't sign up fro what ever reason. Locklear is always trying out new social media places and is always trying to get everyone to switch over, I won't do that because I find that until it catches on like facebook has done, you will be alone with a few others and not most of the cavers you really needed to chat or link up with. All in all our grotto uses the PBSS mailing list as a primary means of communicating. Others are just individual emails. There are pros and cons to all of them. I say use all you can tolerate and stick with them, sure there is no cave related drivel that goes on, usually it don't last long because someone usually hollers enough is enough and it gets quiet for a while... My advice is that I wouldn't limit myself to just one source. http://www.caver.net/mail.html (my cave related email lists) Bill ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Vreeland To: texas cavers Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2011 8:36 PM Subject: Re: [Texascavers] new Texas law I'm somewhat Facebook-averse, thought I'm not opposed to "Social Media," per se. Is there another "place" where cavers gather online? The NSS forums seem pretty slow most of the time, and I never see any Texans posting there. I was a member of the UT Grotto (I think?) Facebook Group for a while, but quit it after a while when I got sick of the notifications. None of them seemed particularly caving-related, either. So. Serious question. What am I missing that's Texas Caving-specific on line besides this here listserve and the UT Grotto Facebook group? I might re-join the Facebook group if that's really where all the action is. Chris, Entrance Caver's Grotto Charter Member Emeritus. On Sep 1, 2011, at 2:21 PM, Stefan Creaser wrote: A social network is a place you can ‘hang out’ with your friends, a bit like someone’s virtual campfire, and be bombarded by advertising keyed off what you type into the system. The sole reason they exist is to sell you stuff, even if you’ve never bought anything off of there. Ie. it’s a bit of an advancement on CaveTex where all you get bombarded with is advertisements for LED lights, off-road vehicles and miscellaneous (supposed) caving events to attend ;-) --Stefan