The list had its first anniversary on Wednesday. I thought
I'd cobble
together a few statistics about the list and send them out,
along with
some information about iComm, who provide the facilities to
run the
list. Please read the blurb at the bottom.
Messages per month in 1997:
January: 257
February: 179
March: 57
April: 203
May: 311
June: (lost)
July: 20 (partially lost)
August: 73
September: 105
October: 135
November: 201
December: 230
iComm's hard drive crashed in the summer and some of the
archives were
lost. The subscriber list was lost too, and it took a while
for
people to come back and for traffic to build up again. There
are
currently 91 people on the regular list and 72 on the digest,
for a
total of 163. This includes people in Australia, Canada,
Denmark,
England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan,
Singapore, the
United States and WebTV.
The list has worked out better than I ever expected. There
have been
some flames and meandering discussions a couple of times, but
aside
from that every has been very good about staying close to the
subject
at hand: hardboiled fiction, and things related to it.
The
subscribers include writers, collectors, booksellers,
academics,
shamus addicts and new fans of the sub-genre. Some post
regularly,
most people lurk, but everyone seems to like it. I encourage
the
lurkers to come out of the shadows!
I don't get a lot of feedback from subscribers, but what I've
got has
been positive. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, or
even
criticisms, please let me know.
And now, a word from our sponsor:
I'm a founding board member and current secretary/treasurer
of iComm.
The blurb below will tell you more about us. If you're a part
of a
non-profit or community group that needs free Internet
services,
please go to the site and fill out an application. If you'd
like to
make a donation, there are instructions on how to do that on
the site
too. It's a worthy cause.
----------
iComm Invites Applications from Non-Profit and Community
Groups
iComm is a Canadian non-profit organization providing
Internet access,
services and support to other non-profit, charitable and
community
organizations worldwide. Over the past two and a half years
we have
helped more than 200 community groups; we have never charged
for our
services.
Among the organizations we have helped are: the London
Secretariat of
Amnesty International, the Canadian AIDS Society, AIDSWalk
Canada, the
Assaulted Women's Helpline of Toronto, and Native Earth
Performing
Arts,
We currently provide Internet services and support to
the
International Festival of Authors, On Spec magazine, the
Canadian
Parks and Wilderness Society, Dance Ontario, the national
office of
the Canadian Mental Health Association, the CNIB Library,
and
Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly.
iComm's standard Internet services including email, file
transfers,
Usenet news, Internet Relay Chat, Unix shell logins, and a
default ten
megabytes of online storage (more is available on request).
All iComm
accounts automatically include a web page for each account on
our
server.
Our program is strongly supported by Canada's most respected
Internet
professionals, and our founding board includes more than a
few
writers. We would welcome applications from any non-profit
literary
groups or writer's associations, in Canada or abroad.
For more information and an application form, please see our
website
at: <URL:http://www.icomm.ca>.
-Patrick Burton <madmagic@icomm.ca)
iComm Founder and Program Coordinator
----------
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"It is better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task."
-- "Uncle" Oswald Hendryks Cornelius
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