SEELANGS Administrivia - Please Read - The list is moving

[Alex Rudd]

Dear SEELangers,

Please bear with me and take the few minutes to read this
message in its entirety.

I've only posted three times in the past two years, so it's
very possible many of you don't know me.  I'm the SEELANGS
list owner.  (List owner is the traditional term for it; I
didn't make it up.  Essentially, it means that I administer
the list, make decisions affecting its operation, etc.)

I'm writing to advise you of a pretty major change.  For the
last (almost) nine years, SEELANGS has been hosted on the
LISTSERV server on CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU.  CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU is the
"name" of an IBM VM (Virtual Machine) mainframe computer
located at the City University of New York (CUNY).  LISTSERV
was originally developed for VM systems but in recent years
versions have appeared for other operating systems and those
other versions offer advantages over VM.  I'll come back to
that in a moment.

For those of you who don't know, SEELANGS exists at CUNY
solely due to the generosity of the administration of the
CUNY University Computing Center.  We're provided the hardware
and software free of charge.  That has always included the
disk space on which all SEELANGS posts get archived.  On
more than one occasion over the past several years our disk
space has filled up.  I've gone begging for more and, luckily,
have always been successful in obtaining additional disk space.
Well, disk space is a finite resource, especially on
CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU right now, so our luck wouldn't hold forever.

Not too long ago another LISTSERV server was started at CUNY.
This new server, located on LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU, is the
Windows NT version of LISTSERV.  As such, and as I hinted
above, it allows us to make use of LISTSERV features not
available on VM.  Plus, since the Windows NT system at CUNY is
relatively new, we benefit from one of its technological
advantages: lots of disk space.  For the time being, then,
disk space should not be a problem.  That doesn't mean we
shouldn't be vigilant about doing everything possible to
conserve CUNY resources, but we have some room to breath.

So we're moving SEELANGS to the new server.

In addition to the additional disk space, the best thing
about the move is that we'll be able to use the LISTSERV
Web Interface.

Until now, if you wanted to change the way you received
mail from SEELANGS, or stop the mail temporarily, or
unsubscribe, or post to the list, or search the archives,
or send commands to LISTSERV, you had to send an e-mail
message.  SEELANGS is, after all, an e-mail discussion
list and e-mail is the medium we use.  Now, though, although
everything you ever did with e-mail can still be done, we
have the option to do it all via a Web Interface.

For those of you who have never before encountered a LISTSERV
web interface, perhaps on another list, it may be one of those
things best left without explicit explanation because it makes
so much intuitive sense when you play with it yourself.
As the name implies, you'll use the web browser of your choice
to access various LISTSERV functions.

What impact will all this have on your SEELANGS subscription?
If you choose simply to go about your life without learning
anything else about the change, it will have absolutely no
impact at all.  You will notice nothing different about the
way SEELANGS operates.  For those of you who do choose to
use the Web Interface, you will find that it makes your life
easier and allows for much easier browsing of our archives.

The following applies to everyone, though:

On January 3, 2000, list-related addresses will change.
>From then on, please use the following:

To send a command:          LISTSERV at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

To post to the list:        SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

To contact the list owners: SEELANGS-Request at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU

If, by chance, someone should use one of the "old" addresses
containing CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU, the old LISTSERV server will
forward his or her message to the new LISTSERV server and
notify the list member who sent the message of the change.

You'll find the SEELANGS Web Interface at the following URL:

http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/

Please bookmark it now and check back after January 3, 2000, to
access the Web Interface features.

Since not everyone will have seen this message from me, you
will see the following at the bottom of every message posted
to the list (and at the top of DIGEST messages) until January 3:

--- Begin ---

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           **** ATTENTION ****

The SEELANGS list is moving servers on January 3, 2000.  Please visit the
following URL for a complete description of the changes and how you will
be affected:

                 http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

--- End ---

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, etc., please
direct them off-list.

Thanks.

- Alex Rudd, list owner of SEELANGS
  seelangs-request at cunyvm.cuny.edu

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           **** ATTENTION ****

The SEELANGS list is moving servers on January 3, 2000.  Please visit the
following URL for a complete description of the changes and how you will
be affected:

                 http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------