Dear all
Over this coming weekend there will be some fundamental changes to the
system that hosts the Geo-tectonics discussion list. This notice is to
give you some explanation of these changes and some advice on action
that may be required on your part (fortunately very little!)
1. Geo-tectonics, along with thousands of other UK based discussion
lists, is hosted by the National Academic Mailing List Service (NAMLS)
provided by Mailbase at Newcastle University. After a process of
competitive tendering the contract for the supply of the NAMLS has now
been awarded to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Oxfordshire.
2. The most obvious result is a change of name. 'Mailbase' is being
retained by Newcastle and the new name for the national service is
JISCmail (JISC being the UK funding agency that awards the contract).
So, from Monday 27 November onwards, your mail from geo-tectonics will
come from [log in to unmask]
If you filter your incoming mail into folders you will need to amend the
filters to trigger on this address rather than the old one.
3. From that date the addresses for sending messages to the list, and
for commands to change your subscription will also change. They will
become -
[log in to unmask] for messages
and
[log in to unmask] for commands.
However, as with any major change such as this, transitional
arrangements have been put in place and messages and commands sent to
the old addresses should continue to function for at least 6 months. You
should note them now, though, and get used to using the new addresses as
soon as possible.
4. The software that delivers the service will change from the propriety
package written by Mailbase, to the widely used commercial product,
LISTSERV. This offers a number of new facilities and these will be
introduced gradually. However, the aim of the new providers is to give a
changeover that is as seamless as possible and so basic Mailbase
commands (for joining and leaving lists for example) will continue to be
recognised. However, you should familiarise yourself with the new
LISTSERV commands as soon as you can and in doing so you may well find
that there are aspects to the systems, new and old, that you never knew
existed! Information is available via the JISCmail web pages and in
particular by downloading the user reference cards from there. The web
address is
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/docs/ref-cards.htm
Mail sent to Geo-tectonics over this weekend will be held and
distributed by the new system on Monday but we all hope that those
couple of days delay will be the only effect that we see. I'd like to
thank all at Mailbase for the excellent service they have provided over
the years and wish the new providers all the best for the future of what
has become an invaluable service.
Cheers
John Whalley, List owner.
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