Taxacom: Migration Re[2]: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

Tue Dec 9 09:29:09 CST 2025

I agree with Geoff on everything. On every listserver, there are slow times and bursts of activity. The only disadvantage I have seen in Taxacom is that it does not accept attachments, which makes some communications a bit more difficult. It helps, not to fill up mailboxes though (mailboxes are larger these days than they were 40 years ago, but so are attachments).
Taxacom has been a great service for the community. In times when taxonomy is not flourishing, we need a general, non-taxon-specific communication tool even more. Thank you so much to Richard and Jim and everybody else, including the contributors, who kept it running. I strongly hope that somebody in a position to do so can take it on and keep it going. I also do not see the format of a mailing list to be "outdated". It is a perfect tool to get your attention.

Frank

Dr. Frank-Thorsten Krell
Faculty Affiliate/Museum Associate
C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity
Colorado State University
Department of Agricultural Biology
1177H Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
frank.krell at colostate.edu<mailto:frank.krell at colostate.edu>
Phone 720.308.0241
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soon: National Taxonomist with USDA-APHIS at the Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC
Regardless of the time I send this email, I do not expect you to read, take any action, or reply to this email outside of your usual working hours.

________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> on behalf of Geoff Read via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 2:51 AM
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Subject: Taxacom: Migration Re[2]: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

** Caution: EXTERNAL Sender **

Hi all,

I am somewhat mystified as to the passivity of the respondents so far. No, Taxacom should not stop. It should continue.
Richard Zander & Jim Beach are entitled to sign off after nearly 40 years. Wow, great work guys. Thank you so much, Taxacom has been both educational and highly entertaining for those decades of my life.
But the next step is to hand on to another generation.

I started a taxon-specific list in the 1990s.  It's still going strong but is coming now from its third location, third software, and has a much younger list-owner than I am.
My list now is based in Germany and uses the free & open source Sympa list software. A lot of universities and institutes run list software. Most of those will be internal but some will be open to all-comers.

I don't want a login web-site based messaging system as a Taxacom replacement.  A true mailing list isn't past technology. It's just about perfect - pushed out to my mailbox, there if I have some time for a quick read of it and can be ignored if I don't.

So, I hope someone can step forward to start a mailing-list Taxacom successor.

Cheers,
Geoff
--
Geoffrey B. Read, Ph.D.
Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
gread at actrix.gen.nz

>---- Original Message ----
>From: Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
>To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
>Sent: Tue, Dec 9, 2025, 11:39 AM
>Subject: Re: Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye
>
>Two things I'd like to say:
>
>(1) My appreciation is deep for those who have maintained this list over
>the years, but please don't think that my appreciation is diminished in
>any way if I suggest that migrating the list to another platform such as
>Google Groups would be VERY much worth considering. Such a migration
>worked well for the ICZN's private mailing list, I'm betting it can work
>well for Taxacom, too.

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