Message-ID: <9124829.1066682883773.JavaMail.root@wamui01.slb.atl.earthlink.net> Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:48:03 -0400 (GMT-04:00) From: yoru@mindspring.com Reply-To: yoru@mindspring.com To: ranma@usagi.org Subject: Re: the end? X-ML-archive: http://www.win.ne.jp/~doi/ML/ Precedence: bulk It's only natural for an ML, and a series' fanbase, to eventually reach the twilight of its lifecycle. With little new material entering the arena, all our pertinent topics have been debated, discussed, argued, beaten, kicked and otherwise flogged to death over the course of... what do we have now, 10 years of running? There is nothing left to say. I believe many of the regulars have either moved their primary interests elsewhere (as is with me), lost access to the e-mail accounts signed up here, or otherwise become disconnected with the community the ML represents. The ML has moved into the final phase of a fandom's lifecycle. We have a few die-hards clinging to the last shards of community, some old timers who occasionally peek in out of nostalgia or curiosity, and the rare fresh-faced newbie who has recently discovered the series and has yet to absorb all the material and information we've sifted over time and again during the ML's course. Mailing lists are also a rather archaic means of electronic communications - the modernized equivalent being the web-board bulletin board, and the ML's antiquated predecessor being USENET. Web boards are far more accessible to the majority of the internet population; you might have some success revivifying some segment of the ML population if someone set up a forum or three on a reliable server and announced it here. -- Yoru