<VV> VirtualVairs presentation

[Bryan Blackwell]

On Jun 1, 2008, at 10:34 PM, Craig Nicol wrote:

> Imagine instead, everything of what you like about VV made easier,  
> better,
> and more fun. What's not to like about that? Imagine always having  
> access to
> the latest and not waiting for a digest or being flooded with email on
> topics you don't care about. Imagine including pictures with you  
> postings.
> All I'm talking about here is BETTER, not less; and actually FEWER  
> rules.

 From a technical perspective, I'm not sure we can achieve all this  
with current e-mail packages.  Certainly we could add photos, but a  
web link really works better in some ways, especially for dial up and  
mobile use.  I'd be very interested in having a simple way to post  
photos to a spot on the server here, if it can be done in a  
reasonably secure manner.  Leveraging the code used for CORSA members  
site might be helpful.

If "the answer" is a web forum, I'll point out that Joe West set up  
just such a forum, and even gated VV to it.  He told me that VV as an  
e-mail list would go away a very short time after that.  If that's  
the answer, it's already out there, and has been for a couple of  
years now.  We currently have 1180 e-mail addresses subscribed, so if  
that's a measure of how poor a concept VV is I'll take it.

A reminder, for those of you who want to read VV on a web page, is  
you can just hit the archive pages.  They are updated in real time  
with every post, so you can already do exactly what Craig says above  
in terms of reading what you want and skipping the rest (you do have  
to click refresh to see the new posts).  The page is pretty simple,  
so it should load quickly even on a slow connection.  I'm not quite  
certain how to make this a more well known option.  I'd like to hear  
from folks who do read the list this way, just to get an idea of the  
use, but of course those users may well be skipping this whole thread.

As far as the rules, let me say this - the rules, summed up, come  
down to a very small list.  I don't think I'd like to participate in  
a forum of any kind that allows profanity, hoaxes, personal attacks,  
unlimited ad spam, and political diatribes.  That really covers all  
the "rules", the rest of the Monthly Guide post is meant to be  
helpful to VV users trying to get an answer.  What's wrong with that?

--Bryan