History of the viola mailing list

Since June 25, 1998 the Viola Mailing List officially stopped calling itself part of the Internet Viola Society. There's no hard feelings with Jan Henkins, former Internet Viola Society webmaster (who has left the mailing list for some time, citing busy work load) and Sean Udal, founder of Internet Viola Society. It simply reflects the fact that the list has not been administered by Internet Viola Society for some time.

How the viola mailing list came about:

The first Viola Mailing List was part of the Internet Viola Society. The Society was founded by Sean Udal in June 1995, and its Viola Mailing List was created in August 1995. Sean maintained the mailing list and web site. Some time later Jan Henkins took over the task of maintaining the Internet Viola Society.

The mailing list owned by Sean was experiencing two major problems: (1) some people were involuntarily subscribed to the list and threatened legal action if not removed from the list, (2) it was not possible to unsubscribe due to "system maladministration" [by Rhodes University's system administrator], in the words of Jan Henkins, who maintained the list along with Sean.

I offered to create a new mailing list to replace the old one:

Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:47:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Allan 
To: Viola Mailing List 
Cc: dbcs@pixie.co.za, janh@smartnet.co.za
Subject: New Mailing List planned

Hi,

It seems that Sean and Jan and others involved in maitaining this mailing
list are not able to unsubscribe people due to problems with the list
server. 

Since I found out recently that I have the resources to start a mailing
list, I thought perhaps we can move this list to my list server so that we
can solve this problem of being unable to unsubscribe. 

I will start this mailing list if our current problem persists.  Please
write me at allanlee@viola.com if you have any questions;  please do not
write to the list as it may potentially generate a lot of unwanted e-mail
to subscribers, some of whom are involuntarily subscribed to this list.  I
will soon post the list server address where people can write to instead of
viola@rucus.ru.ac.za. 

I am also willing to donate my web space to host the Internet Viola Society
web site.

Everyone on this list is invited to join the new mailing list as well as to
help maintain it!

Allan
_____________________
allan@viola.com
http://www.viola.com/

The next two days I received some very enthusiastic responses, including the blessings of Sean Udal and Jan Henkins. I began to feel pressure building--hope nothing goes wrong!

On Sat, 11 Jan 1997 00:36:22 -0800 (PST), I received confirmation that the new mailing list is working.

Then I posted this message to the old mailing list:

Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 03:43:45 -0800 (PST)
From: Allan 
To: viola@rucus.ru.ac.za
Subject: New Mailing List Successfully Created

Hi,

Good news for everyone--the new mailing list is now working!

Please follow the directions carefully: (all commands are in lower case)

To subscribe to the list, send e-mail to 'viola-request@lists.best.com'
with the word 'subsingle' alone in the body of the message.

To subscribe to the digest-version of the list, use the 'subscribe' command
instead of the 'subsingle' command.  Note that digests are sent from 
'listname-errors@lists.best.com'; it's not a mistake.

To post to the list, send email to 'viola@lists.best.com'.

To receive the help file, email a message to
'viola-request@lists.best.com'.  The body of the message should contain a
single line, left justified, containing the keyword 'help' in lower case.

To subscribe someone else, put the email address after the command
'subsingle' or 'subscribe'.

e.g.

subsingle email-address

or

subscribe email-address

The person will be sent an email asking him or her to acknowledge the
subscription before that person is actually added to the list.  The person
can simply ignore the email if he or she does not want to be on the list. 

Look forward to hearing from you!

Allan
_____________________
allan@viola.com
http://www.viola.com/

As well as this message, which didn't seem to make it to some members of the old mailing list:

Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 03:53:07 -0800 (PST)
From: Allan 
To: viola@rucus.ru.ac.za
Subject: How to unsubscribe

Hi,

To unsubscribe to the current list, do nothing.  This list will soon be
terminated, all continuing members should subscribe to the new list and
stop posting to 'viola@rucus.ru.ac.za' and thereby solve your problem of
receiving unsolicited e-mail.

Allan
_____________________
allan@viola.com
http://www.viola.com/

That was the beginning of the new viola mailing list!

Web page maintained by:
Allan M. Lee - www.viola.com