I have had a sense of dread for some time about the list and it goes like this: 

--there were a lot more busses sold in USA than Vanagons

--Busses break down more often than Vanagons and require more TLC (read:
obscure net knowledge) 

--busses can have a lot more weird non-factory configurations (and so need
more obscure net knowledge) 

So...eventually, as the bus people found out about the Vanagon list, the bus
mail would drown out the Vanagon mail. 

On the other hand....

--internet access still costs money and requires some expertise, so the
people on the list would be skewed toward those who had higher income and
therefore might own Vanagons.

--the name "Vanagon" as the mailing list title would slightly encourage
Vanagon owners to join and discourage bus owners and so this would have the
effect of counterbalance any tendancy of the bus people to drown out the
Vanagon people.

Now...

...some of this makes no difference, as , for example, the procedure to do
the brake drums is probably the same on both the bus and the Vanagon. And it
is the same set of evil dealers we all have to deal with. And lots of us
have owned both busses and Vanagons and so can hand down knowledge to
current bus owners. And the 80-82 Vanagons have more in common with the
busses (engine-wise) than the other Vanagons, so there is no way to properly
isolate Vanagon mail from non-Vanagon mail. That is, this makes it
impractical to have people to add in the subject lines of their posts
"V:Subject" for Vanagon "B:subject" for busses and "S:subject" for splits. 

The way it works now seems to be that the splits tend to put their year in
the subject line, like "56 Tranny Swap." The busses often use the word "bus"
in their subject, or you can tell it is a bus post because they are about
heat (lack of; desire for) or you can tell it is a Vanagon post because it
says something about a wiring harness or electrical hiccups while on the
road (or coolent). You can pretty much figure it is a post about the 80-82
Vanagons with it says "911 motor" or "6-cyl setup". 

So I guess things are working out just about right. 

But I wonder if over the next two years as the internet explodes 5x yet
again, whether the current mix of articles between busses and Vanagons
(50-50%?) will still continue. There are a *lot* of 'dem pesky busses out
there. 
Derek Drew
drew@interport.net (preferred)
DerekDrew@aol.com (if interport is down)