Hello, my temporary people! I've been offline and out
of town for a little bit, having gotten blissfully
married last week, and now am back -- rested, happy,
sunburnt, and just barely caught up with my Vocalist
mail.
Marko, what if the list was set up as it was before,
but with a subscription cost? I know that one of the
wonderful things about the Vocalist was that it was
free to all, but in reality ISPs and servers are not
free to all... and I don't know about other people,
but it would be really nice to have our own cozy
vocalist.org community up and running, and get out
from under the octopus-like arms of egroups or other
commercial sites. If the workload is not too great, I
am a big huge fan of moving us back to the old
homeland.
(Although I am the moderator-owner-type-person for
this egroups list, I don't say that because this list
is any work for me -- it's not. And I'm happy to
share the power with anyone who would like to become a
co-moderator, or pass off all responsibility to Marko,
should the list decide to stay here. We'd have to
keep the vocalist-temporary name, since
vocalist@e... was already taken when I created this
list, but it would be fine. I just liked the
non-commercial nature of the old list better, with our
web site and searchable archives and home page links
and feeling of community and vocalist.org and lack of
banner ads and the feeling of belonging to ourselves.
Plus, the old systems of archiving and digesting and
subscribing and updating were, in my opinion, far
superior.)
I envision people stumbling upon the vocalist.org
domain, reading the archives and deciding that they
like it, and signing up to subscribe. The
auto-message that comes back says, in essence, put $5
into an envelope with your email address scribbled
somewhere and send it to Marko, and when he gets it
the subscription will go through. We could all send
him $5 to get transferred from this list back, keeping
this list as an unused backup tool, initially.
Archives can be set up to be automatically entered
into the archive domain a month after they are sent --
still available to all for free via the web site, but
with a short time delay.
This is more work for Marko, or whomever volunteers to
pay for the list costs -- processing and manually
subscribing new members -- but it ought to take care
of the expenses.
I, as a private list member and singer, don't have an
ethical problem paying $5 a year to be a part of the
community. If there are free-vocalist concerns out
there, please bring them up. I would imagine that
those for whom the subscription cost was a hardship
could have arrangements made, with just an email to
Marko (part of the auto-message, probably). And of
course all the subscription information would be on
the web site.
For Marko, more work -- less expense. A slight
expense to list members. Is it worth it? Would it
turn into a nightmare of paperwork? Are there moral
issues? Is it worth asking someone to volunteer to be
money-collecter-organizer, perhaps in six-month
chunks? What do other people feel about this
suggestion?
Isabelle B.
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Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
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