--- In vocalist-temporary@egroups.com, "Marko Hotti" <marko.hotti@f...> wrote: (On 19 August) > The domain registration fee has apparantely > been taken care of, I'll have to check that with Internic on Monday. (snip) > So what shall we do next? Give me next week and I'll find out about the ISP > thing as well as the resources needed.
Hello all, I'm David Topping, the manager of ChoralNet, on whose "Choralist" the list "Vocalist" was modeled. I've been watching this whole thing play out, trying at times to contact Marko (which was never successful), and watching the "vocalist.org" domain registration expire back in June. While the vocalist.org site was still up, I even posted a message to the Guestbook on the site telling people of the move to eGroups, because nobody had done that (I hope I didn't cause any of the "Britney teeny-boppers" to drop in here), and I couldn't get in touch with Marko to put a simple message on the Home Page to that effect.
Those of you who are interested in the future of the domain "vocalist.org" should surf to:
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
and enter "vocalist.org" (without quotes) into the search box. You'll then see that the domain expired back on 17 June. If the fee had been paid, as Marko claims, that expiration date would be sometime a year or two in the future. I even contemplated paying it myself, but since the other information on file is all inaccurate and I couldn't reach Marko (I even tried to get his phone number), I just gave up.
You'll note that the single message posted by Marko to this group was posted 12 days ago, and so what became of his intention to check on the status of "vocalist.org" on the 21st?? He didn't report back, did he? He also said "give me next week", so by my calculations, he should have reported back by the 26th of August at the latest, but you all have waited so long, perhaps a few more days' delay isn't important.
My point is that perhaps Marko is simply not able to help Vocalist move on to the future, and that you still might want to simultaneously pursue other options. I would strongly recommend against a Usenet newsgroup, unless you create a "moderated" one, but then you need designated moderators, and also, not everyone has easy access to the Usenet....it's not as "user-friendly" as e-mail or the Web, and it's not either of those.
You might consider keeping this group going at eGroups, and have a "vocalist.org" Web site with cross-links to eGroups, old archives, and maybe even banner ads and selected commercial sponsors to pay for the costs of maintaining the Web site. We use a shareware banner ads program at ChoralNet.org and are now receiving income from that and other sponsor opportunities on our site.
I note that in addition to "vocalist-temporary" at eGroups, someone also set up a "vocalist" group, which appears to be just a link to the old "ouli.fi" list address. Perhaps there's a painless way to get eGroups to "move" the "temporary" version to the more appropriately- named "vocalist" area at eGroups. Has anyone explored that possibility?
If Marko happens to "drop by" again, someone should ask him if he's willing to turn over "vocalist.org" to an interested party. If the fee remains unpaid, then the registrar might just lease the domain name to some third party, and you will all lose it more or less permanently.
I'm just trying to lend some practical advice, so please don't take my words as being "anti-Marko"...I'm just very skeptical about the level of his motivation and available time to devote to this effort. Feel free to contact me at my ChoralNet.org address, which you can find by surfing to:
http://choralnet.org/manager/
(I don't subscribe to this group via e-mail, but I'll drop in to check for any responses when I get a chance)
Peace, David Topping ChoralNet, Inc.
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