[HiDARG-MEMBERS] HiDARG eMail lists

[Jeff Moore]

Greetings Everyone,

During the Monthly Business meeting last night, there was a lot of
discussion about the email lists and who is and isn't on one or the other
(or both).

To help clear up some confusion, I'd like to clarify some things and give
my email to everyone in the event you need some assistance with one of the
lists.

Normally, when a ham joins the group (HiDARG), if I get a notification, I
will add them to the members' list (to post to the list, use:
HiDARG-members at hidarg.org) and generate an Invite to the Groups.io Shack
list

The Members List is intended to be the primary communication vehicle to the
members (which is why I will put new members on the list w/o being asked to
do so assuming I know they are new members).

The Members List runs on the same server that our website runs on.
Generally speaking, if the website is down it is very likely that the email
lists running on the server will also be down.  This doesn't happen very
often, but it DOES happen!

A little over a year ago, just as the Covid crisis was starting up, it was
requested that we figure out a way to REDUCE the traffic on the Members
List.  To that end, we PAID for a subscription on Groups.io that would not
only give us additional lists but also provide some key benefits that would
be great for communicating with the membership.  The intention of creating
a new list was to remove the majority of the technical traffic off of the
Members List which would help reduce the traffic on it.  To that end, we
have been successful!  The traffic is down on the Members List
significantly!  This has created a new situation with the lists in that we
now have members on the Shack List(s) that don't post to the Members List
and vice versa.

To throw some numbers out there, the Members List now has 202 subscribers,
about 95 to 97% of that number are current or former HiDARG members.   The
rest are local community members that felt they had a need to be on the
Members List even though they are not and never have been HiDARG members
and in some cases may not even be hams.  We've generally honored their
requests to be included for what were good reasons at the time.  HiDARG
currently has about 110 to 115 paid-up members.  A small percentage of that
number are not on ANY of the email lists so other than the radio and
in-person communication, we don't have the capability to reach out to those
people.  Fortunately, that number is very small.

In the 16 to 17 months that the Shack lists have been available, we have
seen an increase to 97 members on those lists from the 2 or 3 that started
it.   That is AWESOME!!  I created the Members List back in 2006 or 2007
when I set up the first HiDARG website.   It took about 10 years for the
HiDARG Members List to go over 100 subscribers!   That also required that
the number of HiDARG members go over 100.  When I set up the first website,
HiDARG had around 60 or so paid-up members - growth has been slow but
steady over the years and recently, I've seen the membership numbers jump
up substantially.  I believe that a large part of this growth is directly
attributable to the Ham Cram classes we have been doing with COCC.

All of the new blood coming into the club has created some interesting
dynamics and I think HiDARG is poised to do some great things in the very
near future as a result of that.

With all of that said, EVERY HiDARG member should be subscribed to the
Members List which should be used to move information about club activities
and events, meetings, and so on out to the membership.   Pretty much
everything else especially technical discussions should be posted to the
MAIN Shack list or one of its sub-lists.

Let me address a minor point of confusion here.   Groups.io is set up as a
home for Lists (or Groups depending on how you use the terminology) with
more advanced features available for those willing to pay for a
subscription (HiDARG has a paid subscription to Groups.io to get access to
those extra features).  One of those advanced features is the ability to
set up SUB-Lists which in effect function as their own separate lists
complete with an interface and so on.  The SUB-Lists are based on the
primary list which Groups.io has defaulted to calling MAIN (this can be
changed when you set up your list but most list owners go with the
default), so the primary Post To link for the Shack list is
MAIN at HiDARG-Shack.groups.io and the sub-lists have a Post To link in the
form of sub-list at HiDARG-Shack.groups.io( for example the Antennas sub-list
has a Post To link of Antennas at HiDARG-Shack.groups.io).  This has
apparently created the misunderstanding that the Shack List is the "MAIN"
list - it is not!!  The Shack List is the main Groups.io list for HiDARG,
but it is not the primary list for HiDARG!  The Members List is the primary
list for HiDARG, if you keep that in mind, you'll avoid any confusion in
that regard!

With all of that out of the way, here is my email address:

tnetcenter at gmail.com

IF you are having HiDARG email list issues or you want to get on one of the
lists that you are not on - CONTACT ME via email.  I will help you get it
all sorted out

7     3
Jeff Moore  --  KE7ACY
tnetcdnter at gmail.com
541-771-7341
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://hidarg.org/pipermail/hidarg-members_hidarg.org/attachments/20210604/c6f6f159/attachment-0003.htm>