RARA-AVIS was announced on 7 Janury 1997, which means today
it's 18
months old. The first two subscribers, Eddie Duggan and
Etienne
Borgers, are still here. I think Bill Murray was third, and I
don't
remember seeing any mail from him lately.
There are currently 109 people on the regular list and 87 on
the
digest, for a total of 196 people. This includes people
from
Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain
and
Ireland, Italy, Japan, the United States, AOL and WebTV. From
what I
can tell, most people come from North America and the vast
majority
have English as their first language. This isn't surprising,
but I
hope to see more people from other continents as time passes
and the
list grows.
Here's a summary of traffic on the list since the recovery
from the
hard drive crash last summer:
Aug 1997 - 73 messages
Sep 1997 - 105
Oct 1997 - 135
Nov 1997 - 201
Dec 1997 - 230
Jan 1998 - 165
Feb 1998 - 163
Mar 1998 - 114
Apr 1998 - 293
May 1998 - 166
Jun 1998 - 257
April is the chattiest month.
I hope everyone enjoys the list. If you have any complaints
or
suggestions, please let me know. Very few people have sent
me
complaints, which I hope means people are happy. I do get
messages
about people who don't cut down quoted text in their replies:
please
remember to EDIT YOUR REPLY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. It's
inconsiderate
not to do so.
The list is remarkably free from flame wars and off-topic
postings. I
attribute this to the high intelligence of all the readers,
and a
common desire to remember why we're here: to talk about
hardboiled
fiction and things related.
Don't forget that if you want to check out old messages to
the list,
everything is archived on the web at
<URL:http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/archives/>
And please don't forget about iComm, who provide the
resources for the
list. I'm on the board (I'm the secretary/treasurer) and I'd
like to
ask everyone to check out our web site and perhaps consider
sending in
a donation. We give free Internet access (from dial-up to
mailing
lists and web sites) to over 100 non-profit and community
groups in
the Americas, Europe and Africa. We're very grateful for
any
donations sent in and can offer tax receipts, although they
won't be
much good to people outside Canada. If you're in a non-profit
or
community group, perhaps you'd care to fill out an
application for an
account? We always welcome new groups.
iComm's web site is at
Cheers,
Bill
--
William Denton | Toronto, Canada | http://www.vex.net/~buff/ | Caveat lector.
"Let's keep the party polite."
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