admin notices

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

John Cowan is on vacation for a week, and all non-emergency admin changes
will have to wait for his return on Monday (is that 8/5?)

Due to the volume of traffic on lojban-list, there will be some changes
in the next couple of weeks, after Cowan returns.  The exact nature of the
changes is not yet determined and it may be transparent to most of you but
we will have to do something, and at worst may have to shut the list down for a
week or two (we'll still collect traffic, but won't relay it, so nothing will
get lost).

Basically, snark's net connection cannot handle the volume we are using, and
unless someone wants to donate around $35/mo for a uunet connection for him,
we have to offload some traffic.  The following are the options being considered.

1) We will move the reflector (the thing that sends out the messages to 
everyone) to another machine, preferably uunet.  If ANYONE can offer us
their machine to host this reflector, please volunteer immediately, in case
we cannot use uunet.  The reflector host has to be able to send 100 copies
of about 10-15 messages per day of length up to 20K bytes, so this requires
mostly a robust and cheap mail link.

This is the long term solution in any event.

2) We will set up a lojban-announce mailing list, which will not see the long-
winded text-and commentary that the regular list sees, nor my long-winded
technical discussions.  This list would have a much lower volume, and probably
shorter messages, and would thus not strain snark's mail capacity.

Our intent would be to have choice between the two lists be voluntary, but if
we get to a crunch, and snark cannot wait any longer before pulling the plug,
we will put everyone on the announcement list, and add people back to the
regular list up to available cpacity.

3) We can dream of having a newsgroup, but not for a while.  We have been stable
at around 80-85 members on the list for several months, with new people being added as fast as older people drop, usually because the volume is too heavy.

85 people is not enough to gain a newsgroup, and there are people who could
not follow us via a newsgroup since they only have mail service.

_______

Cooments are welcome, as are other suggestions.  eric has been good to us in
supporting lojban-list from the start, and we cannot abuse that support. 
Hopefully, whatever action we are forced to take will not degrade the quality
of the list very much.

----
lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
         2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
         703-385-0273
         lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com