The plan for the move of the services from Xerox to ACM evolved over the months after CHI 96. In part because of lack of human resources, the job of email manager fell onto Gary Perlman, the Vice Chair for Publications, who also had managed the Educators.chi list at Ohio State since the time he was Adjunct Chair for Education. The old Xerox addresses would be redirected to the new addresses for some transition period. Also, before and during the transition, coordinating all interested parties proved both valuable and impractical. Perhaps not surprisingly, most people did not care much about decisions.
Requests are case-insensitive, and can usually be abbreviated.
The form describes the lists and helps you set the options you have with them. In January 1997, there were 23 chartered and forming local chapters, nine outside the United States. Some lists were not continued, and the fate of other lists is unclear. The policy of making lists open to public review might help with this problem. Some open lists had no activity in 1996, making them good candidates for removal.