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History of the IFSJA webpage & FSJ-ListIn the Beginning...In late 1995, we were members of the fine JEEP-L list. Kevin Highsmith, our first administrator, had noticed those of us who were always bragging, er, talking, about our SJs, and he came up with the idea of a separate list just for us. It started with, oh, six or so of us, with direct mailings. We grew to about thirteen members, then Kevin got us a listserv. Our First ListservOur first listserv was on Zynet, which worked fine for about a month. We had digest archives, a smooth running list, and a lovely web site, thanks to Kevin Highsmith. Then they changed our software to Majordomo. The First Listserv, Part TwoAbout a month or two into our first listserv, someone at Zynet decided to change our software from Listserv to Majordomo. Our digest mode didn't work, our archives were gone, the list was down half the time, then right about the time it all got straightened out..... Zynet DiesJust about the time we all got used to Majordomo, Kevin told us that he had gotten married! Congrats and all that, we wished him. Then he disappeared. Guess the wifey told him he couldn't come out and play with us anymore... I guess it was a couple of weeks after Kevin's disappearance, that the listserver went down. For a long time. We kinda sorta automatically went into Emergency Holographic Substitute Listserv mode, which entailed going back to the direct mailings. At this time, we still weren't very big, so it wasn't too bad. We weren't getting any response at all from Kevin (to this day none of us have heard from him at all), and the web site was starting to stagnate (Kevin had previously been changing things almost daily, adding, tweaking, improving, etc.), and some of us were beginning to realize that perhaps he had lost interest in us, so one of us snagged everything, captured it, modified it, stole it, and transferred it to its present site. Approximately 95 percent of the way through snagging stuff, Zynet went down. For about six months! So, we had our web site almost intact, and we still had our direct mailing procedure, whilst we searched and searched and searched for a home for our mailing list. While all this was going on, the list was still growing, even without a viable link to the web site through Yahoo, etc. With more members came a longer address list, which soon grew into.... The Address List From Hell!Well, as time went on, and we collected more and more members, the address list got longer.... and longer... and longer.... We were getting duplicate , triplicate, even quadruplicate messages from some members, many many many bounced messages from disappeared people, folks who had changed addresses, bad addresses, etc. It got so bad that some of us couldn't send messages because our SMTP server choked on the length of the address list! We were indeed desperate... we were considering List-o-cide, even... I had been pestering my sysadmin for months, but I must say, to his credit, that he really really is a very busy man, we were begging anybody and everybody to try to get us a listserver! Then, one day, someone new showed up on the list... Wagoneer SamAlong came Mr. Sam Lewis, now forever known as Wagoneer Sam. He was only on the list a day or two, near as we can figure, when he says, "Oh, y'all need a listserv? Let me see what I can do". Well, we'd been hearing promises for months, so we weren't too excited. But.... a matter of HOURS later, we were up and running! We had originally been Jeep-Fullsize@zynet.com, which worked out rather well on the web site, but Sam named us FSJ-List@listserver.tehabi.com. Try and try as we might, it just didn't look right on the web site, so.... The IFSJA is Born!Welp, here we are... hope y'all like the changes! The Offroad Web Site Gets an FSJ PresenceAh, we've finally been noticed... John Meister, as of about the 10th of January 1997, has become the editor of the FSJ section of the Offroad Web Site! It should be up and running around the end of January. Come check out John's handiwork! New England Chapter of IFSJA Formed!Now we have ten members and here are the e-mail addresses. This is as of 13 March 1997. So, here are the Charter Members of the New England Chapter of the IFSJA:
The Migration to Off-Road.ComEd. Note: The History page is now getting a long overdue update (Oct. 25, 1997), so some of this is from memory. Jeff At the end of July, things were running along smoothly with the Tehabi server (except for the fact that it liked to take the weekends off) when it died a horrible death. We were listless... _again_. It was our own John Meister that saved us this time, by getting the list set up on Off-Road.Com. The list was only off-line for a few days and the first digest was issued on August 6, 1997. The Migration to Off-Road.Com continuesTuesday, 24 March 1998, the IFSJA web site, due to the sale of our previous ISP, moved lock, stock, and barrel to Off-Road.com's server. Also, as of this date, the IFSJA Webmaster Staff is also now responsible for Off-Road.com's Full Size Jeep Section. The Migration to Off-Road.Com Ends, a New Era for the IFSJA webpageJuly 2000 Some big changes have happend since this page was last updated for both the IFSJA webpage and the FSJ-List. Lets see... where to start. I guess the first place is to start is that Doc, who ran this webpage, the FSJ-List, and ORC's FSJ section for a long time is passed the torch. Around May or June of 1999 (cant even remember exactly anymore), I (Adam Zeimet) took over web page duties and Len Sulliven took over FSJ-List administration duties. Doc continued to edit ORC's FSJ section. Outside of a move of the IFSJA page between ORC servers, things stayed pretty quiet until Feburary of 2000 when everything blew up. I am not going to go into specifics on what exactly happend, but the results were a group of angry people left the FSJ-List and started a new Full Size Jeep mailing list called 1FSJ over on Egroups. Len Sullivan quit as FSJ-List administrator and Doc took the reigns as list admin once more. This takes us up to now (July 2000). The IFSJA webpage is on the move once again (hopefully for good this time!). While the FSJ-List is remaining at ORC, the IFSJA webpage is moving to a new server and it now finally has its own domain name (www.ifsja.org)! All donated by a member of the Colorado Full Size Jeep Association (now the largest regional chapter with a mailing list of its own). Along with the move off of Off-Road.com, the webpage recieved an overhaul, a body off restoration if you will. Well... I think that about catches us up... for now. Goodbye OffRoad.com, the FSJ-List packs up and movesJanuary 2001 This update is a little past due (I'm writing it in October). The IFSJA/FSJ-List community has broken all ties to OffRoad.com. Doc pulled up stakes and moved the entire FSJ-List over to the Yahoo! groups (formerly eGroups). This created a mess for a few days as people that used to be on digest got bumped to individual emails but the dust has now settled and the Yahoo! list server seems to be working out very well so far. The FSJ-List now has a slew of moderators: Dennis 'Doc' Fariello, JC Jones, Landen Schooler, Len Sullivan, and me, Adam Zeimet. |
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