ADMIN: More thoughts...

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Gang,
Thanks very much for the commentary and thoughts on the
various options available. Beyond the obvious
(many people would be happy to pay something, many
wouldn't, many express concerns about changes to the
list community), I have a few additional bits of
information.

First, the pricing structures for list hosting versus
Web hosting are astounding. If you're curious, check
out www.lyris.net/pricing.html. The figures to fill in
are 4500 subscribers, 100 messages/day, and average
size under 10K. That's average traffic on this list.
(Those figures yield a cost of $45,000 per month, to save you
a trip to the site.) Thus, typical commercial list hosting
services aren't much of an option. (All commercial list hosts
are somewhere in the 10K+ ballpark, if they accept lists
of this size.)

Many ISPs (including ours) offer free lists on majordomo
software. However, piggybacking a list of this size pushes
the letter of the policy pretty hard--and would thus likely
be a short term solution. Both these solutions and the
eGroup and Onelist-type services would require discarding
the existing archives, leaving only the archive maintained
at documentation.com. Ideally, we'd retain the complete
archives (and offer better ways to search the archives),
so that's another strike against those services. (Overall
mail is running about 50/50 pro and con on the utility of
free list hosting services in general.)

Thus, the best hosting alternative is a dedicated server
with Listserv(tm) or Lyris software, connected directly
to a _wide_ pipe into the Internet. The total traffic that
TECHWR-L generates per month is 36 Gb (messages/day times
subscribers times 28days times 3kb per message), so a substantial
amount of bandwidth is required, even before you count the
archive traffic. Additional costs include the list software,
the hardware to run it, backups, system administration, etc.

Several people made good points about the value of the list
(what's one good tip on deadline really worth?) versus
possible costs to individual subscribers. Similarly, the
change in group dynamics of moving to a subscription-based
service would be abrupt and not necessarily good.

One vendor has expressed strong interest in ad space on the
list, which would help cover costs (but by no means cover
the full monthly expense). Other vendors (including all those
who regularly use this space to advertise their services)
have expressed little or no interest. (Little being "we'd
probably continue posting ads and paying for them, but that's
not certain" and no is silence.)

Voluntary donations to help cover the costs have a lot of merit,
but, of course, also have the downside of some people subsidizing
the list for the rest. (Yes, that's what's happening now too, but
in a slightly different way.)

One idea, which seems to me to have a lot of merit, is to
continue to make list membership free, but to encourage
voluntary donations (aka membership in the TECHWR-L site/
sponsorship/whatever you want to call it). By my (perhaps
cynical) calculations, something in the $10-$20/year range
would be required from those who contribute to cover for those
who don't. Then to label each message posted to the list as
"jane -at- nobody -dot- nowhere, who sent this message, supports TECHWR-L
financially" or "joe -at- nowhere -dot- nohow does not provide financial
support to TECHWR-L". Obviously the phrasing needs work, but the idea
would be to leverage peer-pressure to garner higher levels
of support for the list, thus better assuring its future.

(I suspect the net result of this sociological experiment would
be to discourage postings from those who don't pay, and
that most people who make donations would tend to give preference
to answering questions from others who make donations, but
I could be wrong there.)

If you have additional comments, please send them along.
Please use your discretion in deciding if the message should
be posted to the list or just sent to me directly. Arlen and
Barry have valid points about the fact that any of the
changes under consideration will affect the community, and thus
the community as a whole should feel free to comment on the
changes. (Given that my personal mailbox has seen about 2x as
many messages on this subject as the list has, please
understand that I might not answer your messages quickly or
directly. I read them all, though.)

Eric (and Deborah)

--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray                  ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com
UNIX Visual QuickStart Guide is "a superb book!"
Don't believe it? Check for yourself!
Find out more at http://www.raycomm.com/

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 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=