Dear Leftlink subscribers,
Leftlink is now eight years old, and is showing its age. Email lists
are not always the best way to transmit information. The problems I see
with the list are:
* no easy way to find information that's been submitted
* no easy way to know what events are happening at what time, and
who's organising them
* it takes at least half an hour per day for me to run the list
* there's no immediate way to notify list subscribers of a new event
To solve these, I am proposing changes to the way Leftlink operates. I
want to put a web site together that can:
* show anyone (subscribed or not) what events are coming up
* allow events to be submitted and viewable immediately
* allow information that is currently off-topic to be saved and viewed
(but not sent out to subscribers) in a part of the site
* allow more than one person to manage the list
* be fully searchable
* send out one email per day that is a summary of all news items and has
a link through to the full text of each
I think I've got this working at the site http://www.leftlink.net/ and
I'd invite list members to have a look and sign up at
http://www.leftlink.net/user.php . The site has a poll running which
asks whether any change in the list should occur, and has a few choices.
I plan to start putting events on the calendar, as well as posting them
to the current list address [EMAIL PROTECTED] (the first one's been
posted for February 20). News will remain on the list *only* for at
least Monday the 12th of January. If there's a clear indication that
the site is getting subscribers, then I'll post news in both locations
for at least another two weeks, but I'll let you know, so that you can
unsubscribe from the list and sign up on the web site.
Finally, I'll be looking for one person to help manage the site. All
going well, you'll get an @leftlink.net email address out of it. If
you're interested, reply to this email. If you can do a better job with
the graphics than I've done, and want to help out, that's be great too.
And if you just want more information about why I'm doing this and
what it all means, let me know as well.
In solidarity,
Alister Air
Leftlink moderator
.
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