Unified Discussion Group activities

In the last few weeks a lot has been going on in the different online Discussion Groups about LTA Technology on the internet. Just for those who do not know the impprtant group sin the LTA Aircraft Industry. There is The so called Colorado Airship-list, thi sis the oldest list, it doesn't have an archive but you can send attachments to group members. Then there is the airshiplist Yahoogroup which recently resurrected from anarchy, the moderators came back, and now finally the list owner took action to fight the spam problem the list had in the last few weeks. The temporary airship-list on Yahoo has been removed and the Airshipworld Yahoogroup is mainly concentrating on the IAIC (International Airship Inverstors Conference). Charles Luffman provided a quite extensive post on airshipworld covering these topics, which I would like to quote in the following.

By way of explanation for airshipworld subscribers who may not know of the goings on in other similar groups, please read on. In doing so, please note the particular spelling of each group, since they are similar.

I'ts good to see that the owner and moderator of the airshiplist Yahoo Group have become active again and set things in place to re-establish control, preventing spammers abuse. This was a serious problem for a while, primarily due to the group's owners/moderators nonattendance. For some time it was not known for sure who these people were, leaving the spammers to take over.

Because of the situation and, in order to take control, one of the members started another group, called airship-list, with the intention to transfer the members and its data base. This was a difficult thing to do because, without owner/moderator rights of the original airshiplist, access to the database and subscribers details is somewhat restricted. This therefore was a last ditch attempt to recover the situation and relied on subscribers’ (over 300) good will for the switch.

Fortunately, one of the moderators (Gregory) returned, realized that things were amiss and took action to redress the situation. He also more recently was able to contact and get the support of the owner (Hermit), enabling full control to be reestablished. This being the case, the new airship-list was deleted as a redundant group by the member (Jim) who started it. In addition, Hermit engaged further help to administer the airshiplist group, ensuring good administration. The situation therefore has been made good and subscribers to that group should now be able to get on with their deliberations normally.

This was all done in an amicable way where we are able to cooperate. Jim and I are party to the exercise as new moderators in that group, so I will be acting for them as well. Jim and Gregory also are subscribers to airshipworld and I hope that their involvement will continue. As you probably know from previous posts, an objective of airshipworld is to cooperate with other related groups - to establish unity of purpose for the benefit of the industry. With these latest changes we now have a better basis for this.

The Colorado airship-list referred to by Gregory is not a Yahoo group, but is a similar airship discussion group to airshiplist and a large number of their subscribers (like me) are in both groups. The Colorado airship-list was unaffected by the spammers, so continued normally. The main difference between the two is that the Colorado group doesn’t have an online data base like the Yahoo groups but subscribers are able to attach small files.

I should like to say that my interest in airshipworld is undiminished, particularly since this group also has the primary purpose of a real event with public involvement at the investors' conference - where we intend to make a difference in actually promoting LTA aircraft with the people who need them and getting investment for new developments. To gain strength for this purpose we need to increase airshipworld membership so, whilst I would encourage members to expand their horizons, it would be upsetting to loose members now that the airshiplist is functioning properly. Spreading the message and getting new recruits is important.

Here at airshipworld we have not been troubled by spammers so far. Because of this we have not had to impose restrictions on members so, relatively speaking, it is a more open group. I am, nonetheless, mindful of these problems and if it starts will take action to remove abusers and tighten control. I also am interested in moderation assistance to strengthen our position and should be glad to hear from anyone with enough time, patience, aptitude for the job and who supports our goals.

Cheers,

Charles
P.S. For anyone interested, the Airship Association (see link in the links section) are holding a meeting in London on Thursday evening (26 Apr, 18:00 for 18:30 start), which I plan to attend. See you there:-)