NOTE LONG POSTING ? Please read it through! - - Now that James Espey has explained what is going on with the list and his personal job, it?s time to introduce the new moderating panel and explain what we?re doing going forward. The moderating panel is made up of six long-time DML members ? Mike Substelny, Bruce Benson, Marty Maier, Dick ?raddad? Ryan, Knut Grimsrud, and me, Dave Swingle. I will be acting as the ?Moderator of Moderators?, aka MOM. This is a required administrative function because eGroups requires the list to have a single ?owner? who gets the complaint mail and pays the bill to turn off the advertising. The group will attempt to behave as a unified panel, and not one ?manager?. Consistency will be the hard part. For the past 6 weeks or so, we have been undergoing ?moderation training? by taking turns and asking James and each other for advice. If the list has seemed a little inconsistent in the recent past this may be why. Believe me, it?s not as easy as it looks, and it?s more amazing to me each day to realize that James has been doing this essentially nonstop for 4 years. We all owe James a huge debt of gratitude for his efforts through some trying times. Our intent and philosophies: ----The list will remain free of charge. It will be supported by continued sales of DMC paraphernalia as James has been doing. Depending on how well that does, it may also be supported by me. It will not be supported by or tied to any particular Delorean parts or other vendor. The new mailing address for ordering material will be posted to the website as soon as I figure out how (see below). ----The mission will stay the same, a MODERATED discussion of Delorean ? the man and the machine. No politics, weather, get-rich-quick schemes, Trans-Ams, or virus warnings! ----We are still feeling out the moderation style. We?ve been experimenting with adjusting the behavior of the list by encouraging posters to reply privately where appropriate, clip out long quotes, and by discouraging low-content posting. Please don?t take these rejections as a personal affront. It is in the interest of keeping the list interesting to more people, without clutter, and creating a valuable archive of information that doesn?t read like a chat room. ----We will be moderating on a rotating cycle, changing moderators generally once a week. This means that each of us only has to moderate for a week at a time every six weeks. ----We are experimenting with different moderation timetables, balancing the desire for real-time posting with the chat-room effect and the impact on our personal time and our real jobs. The DMCNEWS website will continue to be maintained by several list members. I will, after some further education, begin updating the main pages. Knut Grimsrud will continue to maintain the FAQ section, Scott Mueller will be maintaining the owners directory, and Dave Price will continue to maintain the classified ads. We?re not sure what to do with the archives. Issues #1-500 will continue to be held on the main DMCNEWS web site indefinitely. More recent postings are on the eGroups site. I think it would be desirable to continue to archive on the DMCNEWS page as well, we?re looking into that with the assistance of Greg Guilliot. No huge changes to the web page are planned for a while, since none of us (except maybe Knut) is an expert webpage designer and have to rely on the graces of others for assistance. Keep an eye on this ? it may take a short while to get it updated. I?ll post a notice here to the DML when something changes. The site is more of a billboard for the list than a dynamic ever-changing page, we?ll probably keep it that way. Comments are welcome. For now the best thing would be to send them to me directly and I?ll forward to the Moderation Panel. Looking forward to this adventure; Dave Swingle (dswingle@xxxx) for Knut, Mike, Bruce, Dick, and Marty ------------------------------------------------------------------------ eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/dmcnews http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications