"Owen" wrote: > I do wonder if perhaps we should migrate the list to one of the many > other free infrastructures that would be a little more flexible and > allow us to store and share files and pictures. I don’t know how > hard moving the entire history would be, but I’m sure it could be > done. Google, Yahoo and others have free “groups” set ups that > facilitate search, storage and sharing.
This has come up several times over the years, and the split is about 50/50 on whether or not to do it. I'm in the "keep it email" camp, mainly because email works, is universal, and more importantly, everybody gets a copy on their local computer that they can keep, regardless of what happens to the email list in the future. There have been photo repositories and email sites alike that have simply ceased to exist overnight, and when it does, the posted history, photos, and associated wisdom disappear with it. That's also the folly of posting all your project photos and build manual to a proprietary site that you don't personally control. You probably can't really back it up, and even if you can, that format/structure may go away some day, and your data with it. The "cloud"? Wait until they start charging you, or deleting it after a certain period of dormancy.
Email is why we have every message ever posted to the list all the way back to the nineties in our email archive (at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/ , thanks to John Bouyea). Yahoo (which I also despise) and other sites like it will eventually disappear, and even if there's warning, how do you save that stuff? And even if you can save it, can you make it available again without software that might not even be available anymore?
Email is ubiquitous. The basic structure is so simple that it will be around for many years to come, way after forum systems have come and gone. I have many other issues with forums, such as "honey pots" for personal data gathering purposes, not to mention the forum hosts skimming similar info, but I'll spare you that rant, and my time in writing it.
As for pictures, it's just not that hard to compress an image. Get the free IrfanView program (or something like it) and downsize and compress the image to a reasonable reasonable size before you send it to the list. That's something everybody should know how to do in this digital age. Those who don't know how to do this are inconveniencing everybody they send their images to, as they are way larger than a computer screen, and force everybody viewing the image to reduce it in some way...or pan all over the place trying to find the "real" image. Again, IrfanView will fix that side of the problem also. If you're building an airplane, I would hope that you can learn how to run IrfanView in a half hour. Only have a smartphone? Send it to yourself reduced, and then post the smaller compressed one to the list. It's just not that difficult.
And just a reminder for the several people a week that try to post 2M-10M photos to the list, the limit is about 220K, and there's a reason for that. It's all in the list rules, at
http://www.krnet.org/info.html . And then there's the fact that I'm a complete stick in the mud... Mark Langford m...@n56ml.com http://www.n56ml.com _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
