Dear Listers,
Each year I like to explain why I have a Fund Raiser and also take the
opportunity
to express why I think the List Services here provide a superior experience
over the commercial equivalents.
I use the List Fund Raiser each year to offset the costs involved with running
a high performance email list site such as this one. With the annual support
from
the List members through the PBS-like Fund Raiser, I have found I can run
the entire site without having to inflect any of the members with those annoying
banner ads flashing up all the time trying to sell little-blue-pills or other
garbage nobody wants or needs. From the comments I've received over the years
regarding the Lists, the great majority of the members really appreciate the
non-commercialism of my List systems and don't mind my 'go-team-go' banter once
a year during November to encourage members to support the Lists.
I believe that the Lists services that I provide here offer many benefits over
the commercial equivalents in a number of ways. The first feature I believe to
be significant is that you cannot receive a computer v*rus from any of these
Lists directly. Each incoming message is filtered and dangerous attachments
stripped
off prior to posting. I also provide a Photo and File Share feature that
allows members to share files and bitmaps with other members and everyone can
be assured that these files will be prescanned for any sort of v*rus before
they are posted. More recently, I have enabled limited posting of a number of
file formats including pictures and PDFs.
Another very important feature of this system in my opinion is the extensive
List
Archives that are available for download, browsing, and searching. The Archives
go all the way back to the very beginning of each List and with the very
fast Search Engine, the huge size of some of the Archives is a non-issue in
quickly
finding the data you're looking for.
And added just a couple of years ago is the new Email List Forum that allows
members who prefer the Web BBS-style of List interaction. The beauty of the new
List Forums is that they contain the exact same content that is distributed via
email. Messages posted via email are cross-posted to the respective Forum and
vice versa. The Forums also allow for another convenient method of sharing
pictures and other files (http://forums.matronics.com ). Additionally, added
recently is the List Wiki that allows members to build their own "Online List
Encyclopedia" of sorts, documenting various aspects of their project for all to
share ( http://wiki.matronics.com ).
I've been running email Lists and services under the matronics.com domain since
about 1989 starting with RV-List and 30 guys I knew and who where also building
RVs. It has grown into nearly 70 different aviation-related Email Lists and
an associated web site that receives over 34,000,000 hits each year!!
Additionally,
the List Email system forwarded well over 77,000 postings last year, accounting
for an unbelievable 33,000,000 (yes, that's 33 MILLION) email messages
delivered to Matronics List subscribers! I think there's a lot of value in
supporting
a service that has gone the long haul and is still providing and improving
a high quality service all _without any advertising budget_!
I have to admit running these Lists is a labor of love and I hope it shows in
the
quality of the experience that you receive when you get a List Email Message,
Search the Archives, use the List Browser, or surf the Forums and Wiki sites.
The Lists will be here for a long time to come. If you just want to lurk a
while for free, that's great and I encourage you to do so. If you use,
appreciate,
and receive value from these Lists, then please support them during the Annual
List Fund Raiser!
List Contribution Web Site:
http://www.matronics.com/contribution
Thank you,
Matt Dralle
Matronics Email List Administrator
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