TC-List and Textual Criticism

Wieland Willker sends over a reminder that he has set up a new e-list on Textual Criticism on Yahoo!Groups:

Textual Criticism

His hope is that this will simply be a temporary group while TC-List is on hiatus. Both Jim Davila and Jim West have also posted notices of the new list.

I wonder if TC-List has gone for good? The last that was heard of it was this message from Jimmy Adair, the coordinator, on 26 February this year:

When the tc-list started in 1995, we used free software called majordomo to run the list. After a few years, we switched to a Web-based program called Lyris. One of my previous employers purchased the software so that they could host other lists, and the tc-list piggybacked on their license. Since the founding of the Religion and Technology Center (RelTech) in 2001, we have been using the same software, but two factors are affecting current performance: (1) the total capacity for the lists hosted on the site is supposed to be 500, and we're right at--or over--that limit; (2) the version we're running is so old that it is no longer supported; we're running 4.0, and the current version is 7.8. It's apparent that we need to upgrade. Whether that will solve all the problems people experience on the list is questionable, but it can't hurt!

As some of you know, the tc-list is associated with TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, and both are hosted by RelTech and made available on our servers free of charge. I'm the director--and currently the only full-time employee--of RelTech, which is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation. In the past we've always funded upgrades, disk space, etc., ourselves, and I've done the majority of the maintenance work myself. I'm happy for RelTech to continue hosting the list as in the past. However, at the moment RelTech doesn't have the money to pay for an upgrade to the new software, so I have a proposal for the members of the list. The cost of the upgrade is $350, and I think that members of the list can raise this amount without any problem. I will donate a small amount myself, and I invite others to do the same. If you want to donate, please send a check to the address given in my signature line, below. $10 or $20 from several people will add up quickly. All donations to RelTech are tax deductable, and I'll be glad to send everyone a receipt for tax purposes. If we raise more than $350, I'll use the extra to have a former colleague do the upgrade (he is the one who installed Lyris in the first place), and if there's any left over, I'll apply it to the Biblical Manuscripts Project (http://purl.org/BibleMSS).

Make checks payable to "Religion and Technology Center," and write "tc-list" in the memo field. Thanks for your help and your support of the tc-list!

I have written to Jimmy to ask if there is any further news about the list. It would be a shame if it has finally gone to ground since it is one of the oldest of the Biblical E-Lists on the net. Only b-greek, as far as far as I am aware, is older. I wonder whether anyone did stump up some cash to try to rescue it? My guess is that people would be generally unwilling given the free availability of either advertising based e-list software (like Yahoo!Groups) and university based majordomo software (like that we use for Synoptic-L). If I hear any more, I'll post here. In the mean time, it looks like Wieland's list is the place to go, with 77 members so far and counting.