NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2010 Dec 10, 18:50 -0800
Hi Bill. You wrote:
"If I wish to ask a new question or start a new thread via the e-mail
distribution list these days, how do I do that? (If memory serves simply
changing the subject line was not the way to go.)"
Changing the subject in a NavList email message and replying that way is JUST FINE. There was an issue with such posts until the end of 2009 involving the message boards on Google Groups that made that an issue previously, but no more. We moved off Google Groups on Jan 1, 2010 because of certain security issues there (as you may have heard in the news and in various legal proceedings in the past year, Google has developed a remarkably cavalier attitude towards online privacy and security of data).
You can start a new thread or ask a new question by sending an email with whatever subject you like to Navlist@fer3.com. OR you can take any message from the group in your inbox, click reply, change the subject to whatever you like, and send it as a reply (even if it's a brand new topic and not literally a reply). Shorter and more succinct subjects are naturally better, and if at all possible they should provide the sort of descriptive information that would give someone a really good idea of what's in the message content-wise.
Note that if the reply seems to be going to NavList[at]freelists.org, that's not a problem, but don't count that as a permanent address. We are currently using that service for distribution of individual messages. About one-third of active posters on NavList receive each message individually and interact in that way, as a traditional email list with distribution handled through freelists.org. About one-third receive digests and other summaries with distribution handled directly through fer3.com. And about one-third follow messages, both reading and posting, through the message board or "forum" (web-based) interface at http://fer3.com/arc. The web address http://fer3.com/NavList also gets you there. You can post either by email or by the message boards. If you're an established member (you are, Bill) then you can post via the message boards and add attachments and/or linked files. To do this you need to get your posting code under "NavList member settings" which is near the top of the page at fer3.com/arc.
You can also sign up under "member settings" at fer3.com/arc for daily digests, summaries, and also short emails that give the subject, author, and size of each message almost immediately after it's posted to the message boards. For example, if you know the email address for your cell phone's text messaging service, you can have the site send you a text (SMS) for each message as it comes in. I used to have that functionality also set up through Twitter (which can be thought of as no more than a "short message list server") but they changed their login procedures a few months back, and I haven't had time to update it yet.
-FER
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