Welcome!

[dslice]

This is a test group so that current morphmet members can try out a
possible new venue. Feel free to post, discuss, send feedback to the
morphmet list, etc. Let me (the moderator) know what you think.

Why a change? There are several reasons:

1) There have been some difficulties with the current service provider
of late. A system upgrade last year broke automated moderation, and
the current provider's stand is "moderation not supported." I get
around this, but it is a might painful.

2) We are approaching the 1000 subscriber limit for mailing lists on
the current provider.

3) Last summer, I solicited feedback on the possibility of moving
morphmet to a forum like format instead of a mailing list. The
responses were extremely bimodal and approximately evenly divided. On
the one hand, several declared they would unsubscribe if it went to a
forum-style format. On the other, there was a chorus of "about time,
this would be the greatest thing since..."

4) An online forum acts as its own archive. We will still send
messages to mail.archive, but the original messages will always be
available here, though there is a time-limit on replies.

#3, of course, left me in a bit of a quandry, but with some research
and prompting by my students, I found and have become comfortable with
and somewhat confident in the various services provided by Google. The
setup of the Google groups is that it can be moderated. I can move the
entire current list over en masse. We can have moderated uploads and
attachments. And especially, users can choose to use the group as a
Forum or see it entirely as an email list. That is users can read and
post on the group website, others will see all posts and submit
replies and new submissions entirely via email. I.e., the best of both
worlds.

The one limitation of the GG format is that you can't have subfora
like botanical morphometrics or anthropological discussion, or mv
stats, etc. Just one MORPHMET heading, but that is not really
different from what we have now.

In all, this seems a reasonable compromise. So, I have set up this
list (it will eventually go away completely) for everyone to try out
and give me feedback on. Please do so.

Enjoy, the morphmet mod (dslice)

PS: I have turned on full moderation. There are other options that
might hasten the flow of information, but a number of you have been
very grateful for total moderation in the past. I feel that is still a
worthwhile thing.