Re: Looking for an ISP with a listserver other than majordomo

[dkanagy @ netcom . com (Dan Kanagy)]

In article <199506150725.AAA10589@mail.netcom.com>,
Eric Thomas <ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE> wrote:

| On Thu, 15 Jun 1995 07:52:34 +0900 Dan Kanagy <dkanagy@netcom.com> said:

| I find  this discussion a bit  surprising.

Ooops, is my naivete showing?

| To give you an example, for 250  subscribers we would charge $460 a year.
| That's with LISTSERV and  (very soon - just got the  box today) LSMTP, ie
| your users would get  the messages in under 2 minutes. 250  is not what I
| would call a  large list, but it's  still enough traffic that  there is a
| three-figure cost  to the provider. You  can't really expect to  get this
| for free, or at least not with a good level of service.

Actually, if the level of service I'm looking for means paying for it,
I wouldn't be adverse to doing so.

Let me explain my situation a bit more.  The HONYAKU list I administer
is sponsored by the Japan Association of Translators.  The
organization is nonprofit--the officers of the organization volunteer
their time and are not paid for it.  We're not a large organization,
with 150 or so members.  There aren't that many Japanese/English
translators in the world. :-)  Which is one reason why it makes so
much sense to have a mailing list so that professional colleagues who
are separated geographically can share information with each other.

I fell into administrating the list, as it were, without knowing very 
much about mailing lists.  And I can't say I know that much more 
about them now.  However, as the list grew in size, throughput has 
deteriorated, and, given the nature of the list, this has become a
matter of concern.  That is to say, many questions posted to the list
concern terminology and are asked in the context of real work and
tight deadlines.  Throughput of 10 minutes would be better than
throughput of 1 hour, which would be better than throughput of 2 hours,
and so forth.  Now throughput is somewhere between 4 and 8 hours, 
sometimes longer quite a bit longer.

If paying $460 or so a year would gain us a listserver with 
significantly improved throughput, it's conceivable to me that the
organization's directors would approve of such an outlay.  FWIW, only
20 to 30 subscribers to the list are actually members of the Japan
Association of Translators.  But JAT members gain a lot from the
discussion in the list so we maintain the list as a service to the
translator community at large.  It's a public list open to anyone 
interested in Japanese/English translation.

So, based on the above, would you have mailing list providers to
recommend or suggestions of where to look for one?

____________________________________________________________________________
Dan Kanagy         Work: wordwise@netcom.com        Play: dkanagy@twics.com
Tokyo, Japan                                              dkanagy@netcom.com