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Re: [AUDITORY] Moving the AUDITORY list?



List friends,

Just a quick note to say that I agree with Roy’s recommendation (below) that the list be “migrated” to Google Groups.  Taking our chances that another volunteer manager would be able to keep the List in operation as reliably as Dan has would be OK if there were no alternatives.  But in my experience most volunteer-managed discussion groups show functional decay as career pressures on the volunteers force them to put less effort into list maintenance than is required.  If we can be assured that security of our list information is safe with the Google system (don’t sell it to advertisers) it seems likely that it would be reliable and likely to be around for quite a while.  This is a value-cost issue and to me the preservation of the List has a very high value.  I join Roy in thanking Dan for the exceptional contribution he has made to the community for all these years.

Best to all,

Chuck Watson

 

 

Charles S. Watson, Ph.D.

Professor Emeritus

Departments of Speech and Hearing Sciences and

Psychological and Brain Science  (adjunct)

Indiana University

Bloomington, Indiana 47405

watson@xxxxxxxxxxx

812-336-1766

 

 

 

 

From: AUDITORY - Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roy D. Patterson
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 6:47 AM
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Moving the AUDITORY list?

 

Dear Dan,

Like the other people in this discussion, I have benefited greatly over the years from your support of the Auditory List and I wish to express my undying gratitude to you for the very valuable system you have provided. I also marvel at your ability to do it.

Having followed the discussion on the list with interest, I think migrating to Google Groups is a reasonable option, and if you are really willing to do the migrating, I suspect that it is very likely our best option.  

 

Dear List members who have participated in the discussion:

I appreciate the reasoned arguments you have put forward, but I think you have not given enough weight to the advantages of the solution that Dan proposes. If he does actually have time to implement the move to Google Groups, I think we should accept the offer with our sincere thanks. We have every reason to believe that he will provide us with a solution that will work well for most people. To start afresh with a new volunteer manager involves considerable risk.

Best regards,

Roy P

---
Roy D. Patterson, PhD
Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience
University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EG
  email: rdp1@xxxxxxxxx   phone +44 (1223) 333819   
  http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/directory/roy-patterson
  http://www.pdn.cam.ac.uk/groups/cnbh/
  http://www.AcousticScale.org

On 19.10.2018 16:14, Dan Ellis wrote:

Dear List - 

 

Al Bregman created the AUDITORY list in 1992, and I took over as the administrator about a year later.  A lot has changed in Information and Communication Technologies since then, but the LISTSERV behind AUDITORY has remained largely unchanged.  In 2000 I home-spun a custom web interface (in Tcl!) to sidestep the manual edits I had been doing until then, and it's still what we use, running on my old lab's machine at Columbia.  That system is also showing its age.

 

As you may remember, earlier this year McGill blocked external web access to the Listserv as a security measure, eliminating the modest interface modernizations that had been added to Listserv since the advent of the world wide web. Many of you have since been caught out by the "confirmation link" that you receive in response to posting, but which no longer works.  Just this morning I found out (after 25 years!) how to change the text of the confirmation message to eliminate this egregious misdirect.

 

However, it got me thinking about the future of AUDITORY.  In particular, the current www.auditory.org machine at Columbia won't last for ever, and my leverage there has declined since I moved to Google.  I wonder if we should move the whole list to a more modern platform? I would of course make sure the archives were preserved.

 

To me, Google Groups seems like the most obvious choice, but perhaps my perspective is skewed.  What do you think about the idea of moving off the McGill listserv, and do you have other suggestions for a good replacement?

 

Best, 

 

  DAn.