RARA-AVIS: ADMIN: Happy birthday: list turns six

From: William Denton ( buff@pobox.com)
Date: 08 Jan 2003


RARA-AVIS was announced on 5 January 1997, which means it just turned six. Congratulations to all rare birds! Thanks to everyone for making it so interesting and worthwhile. I have a couple of ideas for things we could try this year, and I'll send out mail about them soon. Themes of the month are planned out through the summer, and there's lots to talk about, no matter how often we hash out James Ellroy's personality or how Daly, Hemingway and Hammett all related way back when. If Mr. Wilson still has it in the works, we'll be voting on the top ten works of each decade we're surveying, and that's bound to get some arguments going and turn out some interesting lists.

I pulled together some numbers to summarize the last year's activity on the list. Messages per month:

 Jan 2002: 457 (theme: Latino noir and hardboiled fiction)
 Feb 2002: 714
 Mar 2002: 771
 Apr 2002: 952 (an average of more than 31 per day)
 May 2002: 853
 Jun 2002: 364
 Jul 2002: 523 (UK hardboiled and noir)
 Aug 2002: 709 (Fawcett Gold Medal paperback originals)
 Sep 2002: 365
 Oct 2002: 285 (pre-1930 HB/noir writing)
 Nov 2002: 376 (1930-1939 decade survey)
 Dec 2002: 278 (1940-1949)

As always, there are people from all over the world on the list. Going through the subscriber roster, I see people from Canada (the list's home), the United States, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Australia, Belgium, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Finland, Norway, and my memory fails me but I think there's someone on the list from a country in Africa. Jose Latour joined us from Cuba for a month. Some rare birds are well known, some aren't, some talk a lot, some say nothing, but it's a great mix, with much intelligent and spirited talk.

Here's everyone who sent more than 100 messages to the list:

 662 Michael Robison < robison_m@crane.navy.mil>, < zspider@gte.net>
 486 Rene Ribic < rribic@optusnet.com.au>
 328 Bill Crider < abc@wt.net>
 309 Jim Doherty < jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
 252 Mark Sullivan < dj-anonyme@webtv.net>
 223 Mario Taboada < matrxtech@yahoo.com>
 199 William Denton < buff@pobox.com>
 188 Jim Blue < wordrunner@aol.com>
 176 Joy Matkowski < jmatkowski1@comcast.net>, < jmatkowski1@home.com>
 171 Todd Mason < todd.mason@tvguide.com>
 162 Al Guthrie < allanguthrie@ukonline.co.uk>
 155 George Cupper < gcupper3@yahoo.com>
 151 Jon Lau < baxdeal@aol.com>
 146 Mark Blumenthal < blumenidiot@21stcentury.net>
 125 Erick Anderson < erick.anderson@nike.com>
 110 Carrie Pruett < pruettc@hotmail.com>

Anthony Dauer almost made it, but was two under. 221 unique e-mail address sent mail to the list; 41 sent one message only during 2002: a few are from people using a different address than usual, but most were lurkers who chimed in. I hope there will be more this year!

There are 316 people on the list right now (138 on the regular version and 188 on the digest), which is a score less than last year. (That also means about 100 subscribers remain absolutely quiet.)

 Jan 1998: 163
 Jan 1999: 237
 Jan 2000: 288
 Jan 2001: 312
 Jan 2002: 338
 Jan 2003: 316

As always, e-mail me if you have any problems with the list, about content, technical issues, or anything else. I will continue to pester peple about staying on topic and trimming quoted text from their replies!

Bill, the list-owner

-- 
William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.






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