Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!bu.edu!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!kristoff
From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: Re: IMPORTANT - ALL BIOSCI SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE READ!
Message-ID: <May.3.20.12.11.1991.8015@genbank.bio.net>
Date: 4 May 91 03:12:11 GMT
References: <9105011201.AA28222@genbank.bio.net>
Organization: GenBank Online Service
Lines: 51

I have received 55 responses from our readers over the last three days
on the issue of consolidating all of the BIOSCI mailing lists at
genbank.bio.net.  This is about 10% of the number of responses that I
typically get when I have run polls to determine how many readers we
have on BIONEWS/bionet.general.

80% of the responses were in favor of consolidation of the lists.  Not
a single one has opposed the idea and only 11 (20%) were neutral.  On
this side of the pond (as netters affectionately call the Atlantic) 29
favored the consolidation and 7 were neutral.  On the other side of
the pond (votes received from Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, France,
Austria, and Israel) 15 favored consolidation and four were neutral.
Thus, regardless of location, about 4 out of 5 of those who responded
favored consolidating the lists at GenBank while the remaining one out
of five had no strong preferences.  If anyone opposed the idea they
have not expressed their opposition to date.

Out of the 55 total responses 13 people indicated that they did not
want to see an end to e-mail distribution and not a single person
thought that we should move to solely a USENET mode of distribution
soon.

Since the response rate is only around 10% to date, I have no claim
for a mandate.  However, of those who seem to care about the issue the
sentiment is strongly in favor of consolidation.  Even though I will
back off from this request if I am deluged with opposing e-mail in the
next few days, I am now formally requesting that the BIOSCI managers
at IRLEARN, Daresbury, and Uppsala transfer their mailing lists here.

All but two of the responses came directly to genbank instead of using
one of the other biovote forwarding addresses.  While not a single
respondant indicated that they were forced to use one of the other
biovote addresses to get through to me, two of the 12 responses from
the U.K. did use the Daresbury biovote address.  The issue of
maintaining forwarding addresses at Daresbury and Uppsala is still
open, but forwarding addresses at IRLEARN would raise the problem
again of LISTSERV mail header modifications which appear to be
responsible once again for the latest incident.

I hope that we can reconfigure the system as quickly as possible
without disruption and I am looking forward to a positive response
from the other BIOSCI sites.

				Sincerely,

				David Kristofferson, Ph.D.
				GenBank Manager

				415-962-7339

				kristoff@genbank.bio.net