new Yak!

[Walter Lapchynski]

Hey everyone,

As you may have noticed, the Bike Friday mailing list, the Yak! has been in a bit of a purgatory for a while. We made some changes to our internal email system which had an effect on the list. Subsequently, it has been down since 22 May. In the last few weeks, we struggled to bring it back up to the closest we could to the state it was originally in. During this time, messages were coming through but, unfortunately, without any information on how to use the system. That interim mailing list has been removed so you won't find archives of those messages, but you will find a whole new system set up now.

Thankfully, all the old users are migrated over and those with digest subscriptions are now getting digests (at least as was set on the old system). This new system has all sorts of wonderful features, which you'll be aware of if you're familiar with Google Groups. Most important is that it does not require you to use email to communicate. There's a web site that holds the archives, is completely searchable, and can be used to communicate with the list. From here, you can also deal with managing your subscription, including unsubscribing.

There are three caveats:
1. We were not able to transfer the old archives
2. We were not able to transfer display names
3. To access your settings, you need a Google Account

The old archives (linked in the welcome message) are still available. It's unknown how long this will be. At some point, we'll provide some other form of archive, though it will probably just be raw text. It's not ideal, but at present, there's no good quick and easy solution.

The latter two problems are related: you can change your display name if you have a Google Account that uses your subscribed email. If you want to use another email, you first have to unsubscribe (send a message to yak+uns...@bikefriday.com) from your subscribed email. Then you would create a Google Account using the right email and subscribe. Then you can set your settings any which way you want.

I hope this is not too confusing or difficult. We really value our community and want to offer a very public forum for users to be able to communicate in one another. Our goal is not to turn the Yak! into another avenue for marketing, but to really offer it as a tool for our users. That said, we've had a long, hard road to go down in order to provide something sustainable.

Since I have seen so many messages recently wanting to unsubscribe, I'll mention one more time how to do this: send an email with the email you subscribed with (also the email you get Yak! messages sent to) to yak+uns...@bikefriday.com and you should get an email confirming that. Note that if the email subscribed is set to send messages to another email, it's the original email you need to send from. You should be able to figure this out by looking in the message headers.

If you need any other help with this, please get in touch. Thanks!
--
Walter Lapchynski
Sales Consultant | Information Services Assistant
Green Gear Cycling dba Bike Friday
office +1 541-687-0487 | cell +1 541-995-0541

[John Thurston]

On 8/2/2017 2:00 PM, Walter Lapchynski wrote:
. . . snip . . .

> Thankfully, all the old users are migrated over and those
> with digest subscriptions are now getting digests (at
> least as was set on the old system). This new system has
> all sorts of wonderful features, which you'll be aware of
> if you're familiar with Google Groups. Most important is
> that it does not require you to use email to communicate.
> There's a web site that holds the archives, is completely
> searchable, and can be used to communicate with the list.
> From here, you can also deal with managing your
> subscription, including unsubscribing.

So if I have this right, a new "google group" has been
created and seeded with the membership of the our old
mailman list.

Those who like perusing web forums may do so at
groups.google.com

Those who like reading email may continue to treat it as a
listserv at the historic email address.

The archives of the Yak will continue to be publicly accessible.

Thank you for breathing new life into the Yak, Walter. I
really missed it while it was gone.

--
John Thurston
Juneau, Alaska

[w...@bikefriday.com]

On Wednesday, August 2, 2017 at 3:25:40 PM UTC-7, John Thurston wrote:

So if I have this right, a new "google group" has been
created and seeded with the membership of the our old
mailman list.

Yep.
 

Those who like perusing web forums may do so at
groups.google.com

Those who like reading email may continue to treat it as a

listserv at the historic email address.

Exactly! The one benefit of Google Groups is that it bridges the gap between the two.  That has been a long standing issue for us. Having a separate forum as we did for some time did not help (and was spammy as all get out).

I know there's ways to unsubscribe with email only. I'm pretty sure you can subscribe, too (yak+su...@bikefriday.com) but I don't know how to change your settings (such as digests).

The archives of the Yak will continue to be publicly accessible.

The current ones, yes. The old ones, as I said, will remain in their old place and will likely get migrated somewhere else, but I can't just inject them into the Google Group. They're always going to be separate.

Thank you for breathing new life into the Yak, Walter. I
really missed it while it was gone.

Well thanks for being patient while the overworked Information Services team at Bike Friday worked hard to try to figure out how to make it work. As I said, I think the Yak! is a super valuable resource for our community and I wasn't going to rest until it was fixed.

That said, let the conversation continue ;)