26078: Corbett: NOTICE; List will have to shut down for a while

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Bob Corbett

Folks,

I just got off the phone after a discussion of the Haiti list (and my 
other list -- the history of Dogtown, my neighborhood).  It turns out I 
will have to shut the list down when I travel on two up-coming trips.

If you will recall, I went to Ireland for a month in April/May and Dan 
Craig gratiously and efficiently ran the list while I was away, and he has 
even said he would be willing to do it again.

However, there was a problem that I had to try to clear up, and the 
webmaster at Webster University says it can't be done.

The problem is this:  there are a few thousand of you on the list.  At any 
given time boxes fill up, or service is disrupted at your end, or people 
leave the list without unsubscribing.  When any of those things happen I 
get the return mail.  Every day, if I sent out the average of 10-15 
messages I will get 300-400 RETURNED MESSAGES.

For me, AT HOME, this is no problem.  I use the unix system Pine, not a 
web based e-mail program, so I just have to hold down the "D" key (for 
delete) and I can delete 300-400 messages in less than 30 seconds. 
However, if I were on a web based system it takes forever.  I can only do 
a page at a time, if all messages are to be deleted, and that takes 
forever.  If a whole page can't be deleted, I have to do it putting an x 
in each box, then delete, then expunge.  That takes so much time.

When I travel I am using cyber cafes or internet shops and have very 
little time.  What I had to decide in Ireland last spring, once I got 
there and saw what the problem was:  Do I shut down the list, or do I let 
Dan Craig continue to run the list and just give up using my e-mail.  For 
that trip, since I had an Ireland cell phone anyway, I chose to give up 
e-mail and use the phone.

However, I am going away for 7 weeks at the end of September (a full month 
from now) just roaming here and there in Central America, and I will NOT 
have a cell phone and will only beable to communicate home and to my kids 
and such by e-mail when I find it.  Thus I can't afford to give up using 
my e-mail for the whole 7 weeks.   The same thing will happen again next 
fall when I go to Turkey and Greece for a month.

I asked the webmaster if there were any way to avoid having all that mail 
return to ME.  After some discussion of possible options the answer was 
NO.  All lists must be in someone's name with an e-mail address for 
returned mail and all other list correspondence, and that person must be a 
Webster University employee, or in my case, a professor emeritus.

I regret this, but some many months ago I had warned that in my retirement 
I did plan to travel more, and that I thought the list would have to shut 
down when I travelled.  I had to do that last November when I rushed off 
to Ireland when my brother was injured in an auto accident.  But, thanks 
to Dan Craig, the shut down was avoided on my trip back to Ireland last 
spring.

I regret that these two long interruptions will occur, but I have good 
health now and have no idea how long that will last, so I plan to travel 
as my very limited budget will allow, and it looks like the list will have 
to shut down during those periods.

The shut down won't be for until an entire month from now, but then will 
be shut down from about September 28th until November 15th.  Then it will 
happen again from May 2nd to June 7th, 2006.

Bob Corbett