Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Tue, 7 Apr 1992 16:45:06 CDT
 <WORDS-L%UGA.bitnet@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
From:         "Natalie Maynor" <maynor%RA.MSSTATE.EDU@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject: Re: words-l history
Comments: To: WORDS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu

> Haven't you been the listowner since the inception of Words-l??
> Were you a mere subscriber in the beginning?  Somehow, I have this
> image of Words-l being born on Ra and making its way around the world.

WORDS-L was started by Al Essa at Yale in October 1989.  I was one of
the first subscribers.  Being a believer in low traffic and sticking
to the topic, Al made the list moderated for a short time in late
1989.  Then it went back to being unmoderated.  Back in those early
days, the list discussion did tend to be about words most of the time.
I think one of our earliest digressions was the one about the number of
egg slots in refrigerators.  There was also the funny loop that occurred
at some point, when a short message about midgies (the small, swarming
insects) was posted over and over and over again -- something like a
hundred times in a few days.  I can't remember exactly when it was that
Al wrote me and asked if I would be co-owner.  He was busy with work and
needed help in doing things like watching for the messages saying that
the list was held.  I think that was around December '90 or January '91.
I could probably figure it out by looking through some of my cluttered
files.  Al continued to be co-owner for a few months but was growing
less interested in the list -- because of other things he was busy with.
Meanwhile I was sending for all kinds of listserv documents and trying
to figure out what I was doing.  We had a big problem with the Yale
listserv, which seemed to be dead or clogged much of the time.   And
the people in charge of the Yale listserv seemed to be ghosts.  In March
1991 I told Al, who had pretty much faded out of the list scene by then,
that I thought moving it to UGA would be a good idea.  (This was after
I had checked up on UGA, had discussed it with Frank Peters, and had
corresponded with the postmaster/listserv manager at UGA.)  By that time
Al really didn't want to remain co-owner, so the list moved to UGA with
him as just a regular subscriber.  I sent a posting asking who would like
to be a backup owner.  Jeff Kell kindly agreed.  He was perfect for it
since he's a computer person, he seems to be at his computer most of the
day, and he knows some of the computer people at UGA.  That, in a much
larger nutshell than I intended, is the history of WORDS-L -- unless you
want me to get into stories like the one of when I sent the list profile
back as mail rather than netdata and screwed up everybody's settings.

As for WORDS-L being born on Ra -- the list was born before Ra was born.
And Ra can't give birth to listserv lists since they can't run on Unix
systems.  I wish they could!  I would love for the list to be running off
of Ra.  That way I would know that I could scream and holler when anything
went wrong because I scream and holler at Frank Peters every time there's
even the slightest glitch on Ra.  And I would have a much better sense of
everything that was happening with the list.
   --Natalie (maynor@ra.msstate.edu)
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