First, the bad news. Vicnet, the mailing list host for birding-aus for about the last 10 years, is closing down. The State Library of Victoria is rationalising its services, and will no longer be providing web hosting or mailing list services via Vicnet. They will begin decommissioning their servers in early January. This means that Birding-Aus is moving! Now the good news. I still intend to keep Birding-Aus as an email forum, but the need to move opens up a lot of other possibilities and options. For instance, I’d like to have a web forum that also allows reading and posting by email. I’d also like members to be able to include images. Ideally, messages received as emails would have a link to images, rather than attachments. That way, members can see images if they want, but those with limited bandwidth can still receive text-only messages. Birding-Aus is likely to move to one of the following: Yahoo Group Google Group Forum on birding-aus.org Stay the same, but move to birding-aus.org as the mailing list host Something else (we’re still looking at possibilities) I know lots of our members will want to make suggestions, so I’ve set up a discussion forum on Yahoo Groups. In fact, if we decide to go there, this may well become the new Birding-Aus. But for the moment, I’d welcome any comments and suggestions on the future of this forum. http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/birding-aus/info The forum will be unmoderated for starters – please be nice! Russell Woodford Birding-Aus Owner
Greetings Russell What is the world [of Australian birding] coming to? No sooner do we hear that eremaea has decided to bed down with eBird than we learn of the divorce between birding-aus and vicnet. Calamity upon calamity. What next? Shall we learn that the Board of Birdlife Australia decrees the feeding of wild birds on a home birdfeeder [practised by millions around the birding globe] as, after all, an acceptable pastime? Will they rescind their fatwa on domestic pussies? Sad as it is Russell, that’s modern technology for you; passing ships in the night. What is new today is old, fuddy-duddy, tomorrow and never the twain shall meet. It’s your forum Russell, do as you wish with it although I would say that as you seem to have already established a platform with Yahoo [albeit a rather uninspiring name for a host] stick to that. I am no technocrat and would be loathe to have to steer myself through even more of that geeky stuff. Cheers Julian
I echo the other comments, and wish you good luck in sorting it all out. Thanks for a great service, Sonja On 07/12/2013, at 6:06 PM, John Tongue < jspk@iprimus.com.au> wrote:
I second what Peter has said! Thankyou! Janine JANINE DUFFY Director Marketing & Research ECHIDNA WALKABOUT PO Box 370 Port Melbourne 3207 AUSTRALIA Email: janine@echidnawalkabout.com.au Web: http://www.echidnawalkabout.com.au Tel: +61 (0)3 9646 8249 Fax: +61 (0)3 9681 9177 ABN: 72 716 985 505 Sent via Blackberry —–Original Message—– Sender: birding-aus-bounces@lists.vicnet.net.au Hi Russ, It’s an absolutely fab and necessary service…SO MANY of us have benefitted over the years. THANK YOU. If you need an “establishing fee” I’d be very surprised if all ‘your readers’ don’t willingly support this…let us know in due course, please. Regards, Peter Madvig —– Original Message —– Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2013 3:03 PM
Thanks Russ, I’m sure wherever the site moves to, the faithful will be keen to follow! Cheers, John Tongue Ulverstone, Tas. On 07/12/2013, at 3:03 PM, Russell Woodford < rdwoodford@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Russ, It’s an absolutely fab and necessary service…SO MANY of us have benefitted over the years. THANK YOU. If you need an “establishing fee” I’d be very surprised if all ‘your readers’ don’t willingly support this…let us know in due course, please. Regards, Peter Madvig —– Original Message —– Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2013 3:03 PM