On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Mark Dziak wrote:

> I've been on the list off and on for several years and have never seen
> this topic discussed and that is:  Wouldn't this list work much better
> as a newsgroup?  Is there a reason why this hasn't been approached and
> if it has, what were the results of that venture?

This idea was discussed when we were thinking about the transition of the
vangon list at u minn to whereever, since Gerry Skerbitz was retiring from
list admin.

My $0.02 against this proposal were:

1) We'd have absolutely no control over the list once it's started. No I'm
not a control freak! But I surely dont want the list to be bombarded with
"For Sale" mail and unwanted advertising SPAMS ... something we'd have no
control over.

2) VW enhusiasts who wanted access to the list must have access to Usenet.
In other words their ISP's must be subscribers to Usenet AND all end-users
would need news readers. I know many have the service and readers as part
of their net connections, but not all. And it is my concern for the
"little guy" that makes me shy away from news group listing.

3) SPAMMERS can obtain many personal email addresses from a single Usenet
feed. With the listserv they could eventually do the same, but it would
take time and effort ... neither of which most SPAMMERS have.

4) From an administrators stand-point (that is the person who must
maintain the list server and LISTSERV/SMTP software), a Usenet group is
MUCH simpler (no work, time or effort on my part!). But I'm a subscriber
too, and in the long-run it probably takes less effort and time to
maintain our service than it would for me to have to scan through all the
"junk" mail. Multiply this some 700 times (number of subscribers) and we
are looking at saving a LOT of PEOPLE a LOT of TIME.

Chris Smith
For the VANAGON List Admin Team (Past & Present)