Quoting Per Rekdal:

> This is very good, but the major problem is connected to
> "old" ICOM members who used the old application forms (they
> constitute a majority) and who are not informing the ICOM
> Secretariat about acquiring an e-mail address.

Although making categorical pronouncements is often risky, I
don't feel the slightest hesititation about stating that a
reliable list of e-mail addresses cannot be maintained manually.

I have been managing e-mail distribution lists since 1983 and am
more than casually familiar with the problems that beset their
operation. Prominent among any list administrator's headaches are
users who report their e-mail addresses as being one thing, while
the senders' addresses stamped on e-mail coming from them are
entirely different. Adding to this the sorts of errors that
easily can occur in the manual transcription of anything, a list
of e-mail addresses culled from written forms isn't going to be
worth an awful lot. (This is not a speculative appraisal. Keeping
the list of Advisory Committee members' e-mail addresses in even
moderately useful order on the basis of info transmitted third
hand from the Secretariat is an on-going nightmare.)

Assuming that the ultimate purpose of keeping a list of ICOM
members' e-mail addresses is to allow information to be
disseminated via that channel, we are talking of nothing other
than an e-mail distribution list. The only way that an address
can be correctly entered in a distribution list is for it to be
automatically lifted directly from e-mail sent by the prospective
list member. Doing so is one of the basic functions of an
automated list server and a primary reason for such engines
having been devised, in the first place.

To be sure, it will be necessary for the Secretariat to register
a plea to the membership to register their e-mail addresses.
Since anyone with a useable e-mail address will be able to send
e-mail, the most purposeful way for the Secretariat to phrase its
request is for everyone with an e-mail address to report it by
sending an e-mail message to a specified address; for instance,
in the form of a membership request to ICOM-L.

Keeping an e-mail roster up to date is yet another large scale
headache. Unsurprisingly, automated list servers often probe
regularly for invalid addresses and report them to the system's
manager.

Cary Karp

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Change ICOM-L subscription options, unsubscribe, and search the
archives at:  http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html