I suppose I should finally write my yearly TML Administrivia summary.
One of our largest contributors, Rob Dean, has continually bugged me
about it, so I guess I should get the monkey off my back today. Now I
know how Richard feels when he puts off the TML turn composition. :-)
June 16, 1991 marks the fourth anniversary of the Traveller Mailing
List. Four years before, I posted a message to rec.games.frp asking if
people would be interested in a mailing list to discuss Traveller, and
here we are!
Statistics: As of 30 August 1991, there are 279 member addresses on the
active list: 6 are on temporary hiatus, 206 receive the nightly digest,
64 receive the biweekly digest, and 6 receive the archive bundles; there
are also 18 prospective new members awaiting address confirmation.
Typically for prospective new members I send them one hello. If I don't
hear back from them in a long time, I try once more, then forget about
ever reaching them. Cruel but necessary on a 280-member list.
Approximate subscriber breakdown by physical location:
North America:
USA: total 186
?? 18, AK 1, AL 3, AR 1, AZ 4, CA 29, CN 1, CO 5, DL 1,
FL 6, GA 4, HI 1, IA 1, ID 3, IL 5, IN 4, LA 1, KY 2, MA 10,
MD 4, MI 8, MN 3, MO 4, MS 2, NC 2, ND 2, NH 2, NJ 10, NM 3,
NV 3, NY 5, OH 5, OK 1, OR 12, PA 4, TX 2, UT 2, VA 3, WA 8,
WI 1
Canada: total 11
Ontario 9, Prince Edward Island 1, Newfoundland 1
South America: total 2
Chile: 1 Costa Rica: 1
Europe: total 34
Norway: 2 Germany: 1 Denmark: 2
Iceland: 1 Sweden: 8 Finland: 1
UK: total 19
Unknown 7, England 9, Ireland 2, Scotland 1
Asia:
Israel: 1
Australia:
Australia: 3
Antarctica:
1 (honorary member)
Unknown: 22
I'll bet this is not 100% accurate, but it is suggestive of the
general member distribution.
List contributions by month (yes, the graph is sideways):
Jun 89 37 | *********
Jul 49 | ************
Aug 48 | ************
Sep 64 | ****************
Oct 94 | ***********************
Nov 63 | ***************
Dec 35 | ********
Jan 90 120 | ******************************
Feb 201 | **************************************************
M Mar 74 | ******************
o Apr 101 | *************************
n May 48 | ************
t Jun 58 | **************
h Jul 73 | ******************
Aug 68 | *****************
Sep 87 | *********************
Oct 66 | ****************
Nov 234 | *******************************************************+
Dec 128 | ********************************
Jan 91 89 | **********************
Feb 63 | ***************
Mar 66 | ****************
Apr 61 | ***************
May 88 | **********************
Jun 91 | **********************
Jul 221 | *******************************************************
Aug ~128 | ********************************
++----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 220
Number of messages submitted
Jan 90: Hot topics were the opening of Richard Johnson's TML PBEM
and starship design rule revamping.
Nov 90: Hot topics were Scott Kellogg designs (posted by Stephen
Smith) and Metlay's TDR announcement.
Jul 91: A whole bunch of hot topics - meson sites, GEnie gateway,
starship designs and economics, autofire/guns, physics, and kinetic
terrorism.
Archives:
87-88 88-89 89-90 90-91 TOTAL
------- ------- ------- ------- -------
# of messages 150 270 956 1113 2832
Msgs/week 2.9 5.2 18.4 21.4 12.9
avg M size (KB) 3.9 4.6 3.2 3.8 3.8
# of bundles 13 28 69 94 232
Volume (MB) 0.6 1.3 3.1 4.2 10.6
Year summaries are from July 1 to July 1
Top 20 posters by # of messages (1 Jul 90 to 1 Jul 91):
Rob Dean 155 James Perkins 41 Paul Dale 16
Richard Johnson 70 George Herbert 40 Brent Woods 15
Bertil Jonell 61 T L Hayes 30 Alan Huscroft 14
Stephen Smith 60 Dan Corrin 22 Mark Gellis 14
Mark Cook 59 James Baranski 18 Paul Baughman 13
metlay 58 Marc Volovic 17 Peter Berghold 12
Adrian Hurt 41 Jo Jaquinta 16
Top 20 posters by volume, KB (1 Jul 90 to 1 Jul 21):
Rob Dean 716 Dave Boddie 103 Jo Jaquinta 57
Richard Johnson 421 Adrian Hurt 100 Dan Corrin 53
Mark Cook 244 T L Hayes 90 Paul Dale 43
Bertil Jonell 231 Burton Choinski 85 James Baranski 40
metlay 145 Brent Woods 73 Peter Berghold 38
Stephen Smith 120 Marc Volovic 70 Joel Lovell 34
James Perkins 112 George Herbert 70
In the last two years the TML has exploded onto the internet, with
several FTP archive and special interest sites for Archives, Starship
Designs, and software. TML archives on MS-DOS floppies have been
ordered by about 5 TMLers. Experiments at discussion subgroups for
Trade and Commerce, Star System Database, and "Traveller Done Right"
took off wildy and then foundered due to reduced interest. Another
experiment - Richard's TML PBEM - was and continues to be a big success.
Also, Jo Jaquinta's Sector/System/Wrold generation software continues to
be more and more detailed as time goes by.
The administration of the TML has pretty much remained unchanged,
undergoing evolutionary change to the shell/awk/sed scripts which I use
to run the TML. The TML moved from a VAX 11/785, dadla.la.tek.com, to a
Sun SparcStation 1, metolius.wr.tek.com. Tektronix finally granted
indeirect internet access to its employees, so with the aid of Dan
Corrin I am ocassionally found doing extra organizational effort at the
sunbane ftp site.
Are there changes coming up in the adminstration of the TML? Perhaps.
If I can ever unbury myself from my many personal and work commitments,
I would like to completely rewrite the list/archive administration
software into a coherent, portable package. Also, Tek management is
promising to move everyone in the Walker Road site back into Beaverton
sometime in the nebulous future, so there may be some TML down time when
this eventuality comes about.
If you can think of any way to make this list more useful, I'd like to
hear your suggestions (even if they are "be more prompt, James!").
Thanks everybody for being a part of this list! Remember you don't need
to be a contributor to be welcome here.
James