[Harp-L] 12 years and counting

[fjm <mktspot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Harp-l quietly passed the 12 year  mark this Wednesday the 6th of 
October.  We've had some dark days in the past.  Most notably a couple 
of service outages one of which lasted for a month or more.  Chris 
Pierce the founder of the list had written me during that one, 
coinicidently it fell during the 10th anniverserary of the list.  If 
you're out there Chris my thanks to you for your vision and pioneering 
spirit.  For anyone interested the archives now have the first several 
years, here's a link to day one. 
http://harp-l.org/pipermail/harp-l/1992-October/date.html

My thanks to the list membership the quality of postings has vastly 
improved from several years ago and I think we're finally figuring out 
how to disagree and not be quite so nasty about it.  In years past the 
big knock on harp-l has been that it is an experts list and not so 
tolerant of beginers, dismissive responses were often posted to beginer 
questions.  I have not seen any of that in a very long time.  Anyhow the 
cultural shift has been quite noticeable and it is reflected in our 
traffic.  We're back to being consistently the largest harmonica list on 
the internet both in membership and actual traffic and posting.

Finally I'd like to thank my collaborator and co-conspirator Ben 
Nathanson.  His desire to restore the harp-l archives was indeed the 
catalyst for the change that is this new interface and isp.  It's 
amazing to me how much easier this job (listowner) is with all these new 
tools  for processing bounces and subscriber requests.  Even more 
important than that is being able to write Ben and get another opinion, 
often differing from mine, on the various day to day problems that crop 
up on the list.

fjm harp-l-listowner