At the risk of delaying a decision further, may I also suggest to Murli that, to get a broader sense of people's opinions on this question, you make use of the polling feature on eGroups?
You could set up a poll that asks people a yes/no question about switching (more options if you wish). This generates an email to everyone who is currently signed up with the OSLIST on eGroups and asks them to go to the OSLIST/eGroups website (a link is provided in the email) to choose their option. Unlike regular postings, people's votes are not broadcast to everyone, though the overall results are visible on the website even while the poll is still open for further voting. You can choose how long you want to leave the poll open, then take the results as input to the decision. While this method would not get input from those not on eGroups, it would get opinions from those who have seen both forms of the list. And it would have the side benefit of exposing those on the new system to one of its additional capabilities -- this could generate ideas for more creative uses of this capability, but that's another tangent! Patrick McAuley PTM Consulting Tel: (519) 827-9396 20 Magnolia Lane Fax: (519) 827-0956 Guelph, ON N1G 4X7 [email protected] Canada ----- Original Message ----- From: Peggy Holman To: [email protected] Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2000 1:52 PM Subject: Switching to egroups Murli, While this is going to the list, I address this request to you as the person who started us on this experiment in decision making. (As an aside, I think it's been instructive to observe our process on making a collective decision. There's been a great exchange of information, several experiments initiated. That's been wonderful.) I think we are ready for a decision on listserv or egroups. So here's my "2 cents worth" delivered as a request to you, Murli. The latest cries of "I'm confused" lead me to think we would be best served by someone knowledgeable making a decision on the list's behalf. Since you've been willing to invest the energy into this, I think you're the right person to do it. The choice of egroups or listserv is a technical one. Those with expertise have given you their opinions. The only negative I heard for egroups was customer support. In all other ways egroups sounds superior. I suggest you make a call on which way to go. If you are satisfied that support won't be an issue, then take the 3 or 4 days to move everyone over to egroups and put out instructions, just as you did when we switched listservs in 1998, that tells people the new e-mail address. As I mentioned, OSI(US) can pay to make the site ad free. Just send me the details. So, there you have it. I think the information to enable action is in. Would you be willing to take the lead on bringing this to closure? Thanks, Peggy
