NFLUG Mailing List Issues

[Dennis J. Eberl]

Darin Perusich wrote:

> people who want to sign up for the mailing list will do so by sending
> email to majordomo at nflug.org, i will not add new members to the list by
> hand or request unless they are having real problems. i'm looking at a
> few cgi's so we can have a simple form on the web page to get signed up
> on the list. this will still require that people send back an
> authorization email.

Great.

> i think should be seperate from the "join"
> membership page, if someone want's to sign up for the mailing list they
> shouldn't have to be an "official" member as well.

Why not? I have difficulty such non-member requests. I have trouble
understanding why you want to split the list. For example, if Corel wants to
monitor our list, they should be able to do that, but -- and I do feel strongly
about this -- we should make them fill out a membership form with the
name and e-mail address of a contact person. I don't see why we are going
in circles about this. I feel out of sync with the group (or at least with you,
Darin, and James on this).

I strongly feel we need a detailed membership list with as much information
on our members (computer wise, not personal although it's nice to have an
address if we do a mailing) as we can get. I also feel that making it possible
for someone to join the list directly by sending 'subscribe nflug' should be
ruled out, because we will end up with people on the list that think that's all
they have to do to become members.

What's the problem here? Ideally, the whole thing should be automatic so
that one fills out the membership form and hits a radio button to subscribe
(or not) to the mailing list. If you and James can bring that about so I don't
have to manually handle submitted forms, that would be great. But I am
opposed to splitting the lists and feel if we cannot resolve this issue via
exchanges on the list, we should do so at the next meeting. After all, someone
can fill out the form with name, e-mail address, and "!$@$#!%$$^" in the
comment field and get on the list. Perhaps we could settle this by adding
different classes to the membership form: (*) Member ( ) Affiliate from
Another LUG ( ) Non-Member List Only?

Why are we going in circles over this nonsense. We dropped half of the
goddamned membership when we started the list. THAT IS THE ISSUE
-- i.e., getting them back.

Dennis

>
> --
> Darin Perusich
> System's Administrator
> Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research Inc.
> darinper at phor.com