Late Monday night there was a failure of the main disk drive unit on gnosys,
the NativeNet relay machine here in Boston, which resulted in an outage that
has lasted more than a day. I have had to reformat the drive in order to
recover, with the result that some articles may have been lost, since my most
recent backups were done on Saturday afternoon. However, I did process most
of the articles that arrived on the weekend prior to the disk failure, so I
don't think we lost much.
If you did submit an article and do not see it by Thursday morning, please
re-submit it to the appropriate address:
NATIVE-L native-l@gnosys.svle.ma.us
NAT-LANG nat-lang@gnosys.svle.ma.us
NAT-EDU nat-edu@gnosys.svle.ma.us
NATCHAT natchat@gnosys.svle.ma.us
While I have your attention, I'd like to mention a few more matters. One
is that I want to point out that though the posting addresses given here
are on my own machine ("gnosys"), the LISTSERV software which does the
actual relaying of articles resides on the TAMVM1 system for all the lists
except for NAT-EDU, which is on INDYCMS. The addresses for the LISTSERVs
on these machines is:
listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu
and
listserv@indycms.iupui.edu
You must use these addresses if you wish to do things like searching or
retrieving files from the filelist or notebook archives or altering your
subscription options. You can submit articles to the lists via these
machines (e.g. "native-l@tamvm1.tamu.edu"), but those articles are auto-
matically relayed to gnosys for approval and processing, so it's better
and faster to send them here yourself. Just remember that if you want to
do something like set the "nomail" mode or unsubscribe from one or more
of the lists (using the "signoff" command), you will need to use one of
the "listserv" addresses shown above.
Speaking of approving articles, I am preparing to turn that responsibility
with respect to the NATIVE-L and NATCHAT lists over to a rotating set of
volunteer moderators for a while. Jay Brummett (Jay.Brummett@m.cc.utah.edu)
has agreed to take over the task initially. I may be calling on others from
time to time as needed. The job requires an ability to distinguish what is
and what is not relevant to the list in question, as well as good editing
skills, since articles must sometimes be reformatted due to textual problems
such as long lines, or because they contain too much quoted material or have
missing or inappropriate subject lines, etc.
Meanwhile, I will be busy handling the technical aspects of the lists, like
answering the many requests for information that arrive daily, and dealing
with undeliverable messages, as well as approving articles arriving from
electronic conferences on IGC and the other APC systems. I also want to
give some time to working out the educational "electronic outreach" project
that will link Native schools around the world and develop curriculum for
classroom exchanges, and to coordinate new information services so that you
will be able to access NativeNet materials via gopher and World Wide Web
servers. Another important personal project for the coming months is to
do a lot of research and study on technical matters, so as to be better able
to institute and maintain these new services, both with regard to NativeNet
and to other subjects which represent personal interests of mine, such as
environment and human rights. In order to get the time I need to do these
things, I plan to place as much of the day-to-day operation of the NativeNet
lists into the hands of volunteers. I'll have more to say on this subject
soon.
I would also like before the end of the summer to put together a set of
writeups that together provide a comprehensive guide to using the NativeNet
lists and whatever new services are instituted, so that people will be able
to utilize them more easily.
I am sending a message to those people who indicated a willingness to help
a couple of months ago in response to the series of "open letters" I wrote
at that time. If you do not receive a copy of that message, you can assume
that I've lost track of your offer, so please get in touch with me again to
let me know. Also, if anyone else would like to help in any way, please do
drop me a note, indicating any special skills and/or interests. I'll get
back to you as soon as possible.
Thanks to everyone for being a part of the NativeNet "virtual" community!
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst