From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist@KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] This list is 22 years old today
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2024 09:02:56 -0500 (EST)

This list, intended for past and present WSFA members, is 22 years old
today.

There have been more than 17,000 messages from more than 70 people,
an average of 800 messages per year, though most of them were in the
early years.

Complete archives, with indexes by date and by sender, are at
http://KeithLynch.net/wsfa/list

Please send in plain text only.  See
https://pyropus.ca/personal/writings/nomime.html
for why HTML email is a bad idea, and for how to turn it off.  (TL;DR:
Such email is at best bloated and hard to read, and at worst can be
(and usually is) spam or malware.  And lots of mailing lists, ISPs,
employers, and schools silently block it from their users.)  I
recommend turning HTML email off for everyone who doesn't explicitly
request it, and I've never heard of anyone who explicitly requests it.
HTML is for web pages, not for email.

I kept this list going after WSFA changed its official list to a
Yahoogroups list, since many people refused to use Yahoogroups.
Four years ago I added this to the annual message:

  Now that the club has wisely replaced the Yahoogroups list with a
  Googlegroups list, does anyone object to my phasing out this list
  and encouraging people to move to that list?  Thanks.

I soon learned the hard way that WSFA's Googlegroups list has secret
rules, and if you violate one of them you will be permanently banned
without appeal.  So I will continue to keep this list going.  Nobody
has ever been banned from this list.  Someone please post this fact
to the Googlegroups list and to everyone who has been banned from it.
Thanks.

Nobody has ever been banned from this list, and a look at the archives
will show that over at least the past decade it's been much friendlier
than the Yahoogroups or Googlegroups lists.