[TheThinkTank] Renaming the Think Tank – Thanks for bringing this up, and it seems worthwhile to rename;
I do not mind the word 'collective,' although Free Cycles Missoula is not technically a collective; we are a non profit community bicycle shop. We are in spirit a collective, and have many of the same operating attributes.
Thanks! [...]
Yeah so many community shops aren't collectives, and some aren't even cooperatives, just nonprofits. Some are collectives, but not nonprofits. There's a lot of range.
I also don't object to changing the name from "ThinkTank" to "BikeCollectives" or "BikeCollectives ListServ". We should be clear in any case that it isn't strictly collectives represented here. I'd suggest "BikeCommunities" instead, but that could imply cycling advocacy orgs with no shop functons at all, which is too broad. This is a list for shops.
As for larger transformations such as using other protocols or software, I'm firmly against anything that isn't self-hosted and open source. Hyperkitty, which is both of the above, is what we *just* upgraded to around a year ago and it's a massive improvement over plain Mailman. As far as listserv applications go, it's excellent.
In terms of messaging in general, there's a huge amount of friction these days over email. Younger people have grown up almost exclusively with short-form, highly aesthetic, ephemeral communication products sold by corporations, and never used email growing up unless it was to talk with grandma and grandpa. This group seems to feel email is just the worst possible method of messaging.
And fundamentally, a listserv runs on email.
The sad thing is, this is exclusively a client and culture problem. Email is not an app or an interface, it's a protocol (SMTP), and you can choose any number of apps and different interfaces to use it. And the length of messages can just be set by social norms in a group. It doesn't have to be hardcoded in software.
There are *a lot* of open-source, self-hosted groupware and collaboration apps and/or platforms out there with a lot of different useful and user-friendly features. There's even a reverse-engineered Discord clone. If ultimately people decide on ditching the listserv format, I'm happy to help with alternative suggestions, tutorials, or technical assistance.
Ultimately, I'd encourage anyone who feels a great deal of friction in using listservs or email itself to simply explore other email apps. One of them is likely to have an interface that ends up feeling comfortable.
~Cyclista Nicholas