As the owner of the list, which I have been for something close to twenty
years now in various places, let me say a few things, in no
particular order of importance.
First, we have over 230 current active members. That probably comes as a
surprise to a lot of you, I myself didn't even realize it had gotten that
high because I hadn't looked at it in quite a while. Most of these people,
presumably, wouldn't be here if they weren't happy with the list, at least
for the most part, as it presently exists. Now, I will certainly grant you
that those who post to it and run into some unique difficulties when doing
so deserve to have those concerns dealt with if at all
possible, as a list without its contributors is nothing more than a group
of email addresses. But it is also true that those experiencing these
issues do not make up the majority of the posters to the list, let alone
the majority of its subscribers.
Second, but related to the above, I personally am probably not going to be
inclined to deal with the logistics of moving that many people from one
list host to another, at least not right now. Both my parents are in
something less than stellar health these days, and that's taking up a lot
of my time, over and above just the normal obligations of life. This list
is certainly important to me, I wouldn't have kept it going for as long as
I have if it wasn't, but it has to take its place in terms of priorities,
and again, right now, with it running at least reasonably well, it's just
not that high in the stack. Likewise, I personally am not particularly
inclined to move it to one of the typically-suggested locations for such
things, like Yahoo or Google, both of which present various access issues
of one sort or another, in addition to mining your personal data for
all it's worth, and/or selling/trading/giving it away to most
anyone who will take it. I know privacy is becoming more and more of a
foreign concept these days, but the privacy of my list subscribers is
still more important to me than that.
Having said all this, however, the concerns about message formatting and
the like are also important, and have never not been so. I would be
glad to hear privately from anyone who owns a listserv list on the
icors.net domain who has been able to find a way around them, and in fact
would hope they would have already been in touch if there was one, but we
shall see. Likewise, if anyone knows of such a person, again put them in
touch and I'll do what I can. And most definitely, anyone who wants to
start something somewhere else is more than welcome to do so, I certainly
don't have a monopoly on lists for blind hams or anyone else. I would,
however, ask that you do me and the list the courtesy of not trying to
organize it here. Take it private all you want, but not here,
please. I think both myself and the list deserve at least that much
consideration.
Thanks.
--
Ken,
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