Dear List -
Al Bregman created the AUDITORY list in 1992, and I took over as the administrator about a year later. A lot has changed in Information and Communication Technologies since then, but the LISTSERV behind AUDITORY has remained largely unchanged. In 2000 I home-spun a custom web interface (in Tcl!) to sidestep the manual edits I had been doing until then, and it's still what we use, running on my old lab's machine at Columbia. That system is also showing its age.
As you may remember, earlier this year McGill blocked external web access to the Listserv as a security measure, eliminating the modest interface modernizations that had been added to Listserv since the advent of the world wide web. Many of you have since been caught out by the "confirmation link" that you receive in response to posting, but which no longer works. Just this morning I found out (after 25 years!) how to change the text of the confirmation message to eliminate this egregious misdirect.
However, it got me thinking about the future of AUDITORY. In particular, the current
www.auditory.org machine at Columbia won't last for ever, and my leverage there has declined since I moved to Google. I wonder if we should move the whole list to a more modern platform? I would of course make sure the archives were preserved.
To me, Google Groups seems like the most obvious choice, but perhaps my perspective is skewed. What do you think about the idea of moving off the McGill listserv, and do you have other suggestions for a good replacement?
Best,
DAn.