[Businessmtg] Archives

[Steve Rankin]

Hi BJ,

Everyone should understand that ASP is not some other Al-Anon meeting. It
never has been nor was that ever our goal. We are structured differently
than others; both how we function as a group and how we function
technically. 

As I mentioned before, the archives are all or nothing. It's a simple switch
on the server Mailman software; Yes or No.

Select yes, and the server creates one small text file every month. Select
no, and they disappear. Poof!

Fact. The ASP archives exist. They are ASP property. Who has the right and
authority to destroy them? No one individual. Only the group conscience can
make that decision now. 

As for removing or not archiving specific shares? That is not possible.
Besides, that seems a lot like personalities over principles IMO. We don't
pick and choose whose shares are archived and whose or not. Nor do we remove
shares that we don't like regardless of the reason. Bottom line there . . .
why? We can argue the principles of yes and no, but limits? Those are
arbitrary compromises that don't satisfy any principles other than another
attempt to make everyone happy, which never seems to work. 

Our server.

ASP contracts with a provider and pays rent for a dedicated server. This
means that we can do whatever we wish on that server as long there is room
on the hard drive. Our dedicated server account allows us to use as much
bandwidth as we wish, up to the limits of that machine. Of course, we are
paying for a base machine not something big and fancy. If we do things that
slow down the service to the meeting, well that's our fault and we
experience the consequences.

This is very different than what other Al-Anon groups do. Some have Yahoo
accounts that host their meetings on Yahoo Groups. Others contract with a
provider for a "shared server". Pricing on a shared server is generally
based on bandwidth - how much traffic do you have: number of subscribers X
number of messages/month. Either pay for plenty of bandwidth in advance, or
get service cut when you exceed what you have paid for, or the service
grinds to a near stop as the service is "throttled" because you've gone over
your allotted bandwidth. When we were preparing to transition in 2006 we
priced service for the bandwidth we were using. Yikes, it was going to cost
us well over $200/month, probably $300/month. Then, Dawn saved the day when
she found our current provider that gives us a dedicated server for about
$100/month. 

Space vs. bandwidth. 

Space on a hard drive is cheap. Ridiculously cheap. My personal website,
which includes the original ASP website has over 20,000 files on it, yet I'm
using less than 5% of my allotted space. Data just sits on a hard drive. It
does nothing but take up a little bit of space. Of course, it does use some
bandwidth when someone accesses the ASP site and requests a web page. That
happens a few dozen times a day; nothing compared to the 90,000 messages the
server processes every day.

Bandwidth is expensive. That's because the provider has to buy bandwidth,
that they resell sell to customers like us. Remember the good ol' days when
your long distance & cell phone calls cost by the minute.

Plus, bandwidth requires computer TIME. It takes computer time for the
server to receive a message, re-format the message for the list, and then
send it to every address on the mailing list. If you need very little
bandwidth, you don't have to have a powerful server. But, as your bandwidth
requirements increase, you need more powerful computers to process the
information and those cost more money, which means more expensive service. 

Lastly, while ASP does not have the largest number of subscribed members, we
do have the most active membership which results in the largest bandwidth
requirement of any online Al-Anon meeting. And unlike other online meetings,
ASP has always been fully self-supporting declining outside contributions. 

Hugs,
Steve