I've let John Cliff handle most of the recent comments about how the
list is configured, and I hope I'm not treading on his toes by
mentioning the following points.
The Europa Forum is intended for messages likely to be of general
interest to _all_ Europa people. It has never purported to be a
substitute for the maintenance of a personal e-mail address book of
one's regular correspondents.
It is configured in the same way as pretty much all the other e-mail
lists around - that is, the default is to reply to the list. On none
of the many discussion-style e-mail lists that I subscribe to (about
7 at present I think - I usually read {except for the spam} and deal
with about 100 e-mail messages per day) have I seen any requests by
users for a "reply-to-sender" default.
When the Europa list was first set up, it conformed to the standard
model, and I cannot recall a single complaint about it in the early
years. It's very unfortunate that because of the limitations of
out-of-date server software at Aviators Network, the list was then
re-configured in a non-standard way, leading to the formation of
inappropriate habits by users over some years.
I'm sorry that for a few of the 450-odd subscribers to the list, the
recent changes have been uncomfortable, and we hope that things will
seem less awkward as familiarity grows. For those who are using an
e-mail system provided by their employer and have little control over
its configuration, perhaps you should consider moving recreational
activities to a home computer where you can choose what to install.
It's hard to envisage exactly how any modification will be received
by all those affected, but we believe we have (in time stolen from
Europa-building) set things up to give the greatest benefit to the
majority, while minimising future maintenance requirements. (Of
course if there are 450 replies to this post all disagreeing, it
might be necessary to reconsider!)
We also remember that perhaps one day eager volunteers will arise,
offering to take over the administrative tasks we currently perform
for the Club, and we are trying to leave the shop as clean and tidy
as possible for those new incumbents.
As for a separate list for fliers only, I hope that does not happen,
personally wish to know about all aspects of the Europa experience.
If people get into the habit of prefixing their flying-topic message
subject lines with "flying" then anyone who wants to see only those
posts can arrange a filter (or message handler) to bin all the rest -
and those who are not interested in flying (what!) can do the
reverse. Of course, some messages impinge on both building and
flying, so I cannot be sure what to recommend in that case as one or
other of the filters mentioned above would not work as desired ....
but certainly choosing informative subject lines is a great help to
all users.
regards
Rowland
| Rowland Carson Europa Club Membership Secretary
| Europa 435 G-ROWI PFA #16532 EAA #168386
| e-mail <memsec@europaclub.org.uk> website <www.europaclub.org.uk>
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