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AOL To Discontinue LISTSERV

Posted by Soulskill on from the yes-aol-still-exists dept.

alphadogg writes "On December 1, AOL will shut down its free LISTSERV-based mailing-list hosting operations, the company has told mailing list administrators. 'If your list is still actively used, please make arrangements to find another service prior to the shutdown date and notify your list members of the transition details,' an email notice sent out by AOL stated. At the peak of the service's popularity in the late 1990s, AOL was the third-largest provider of mailing lists, serving more than a million users."

13 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. This is huge news! by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I didn't even know AOL was still in business...

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:This is huge news! by nospam007 · · Score: 5, Funny

      For you young whippersnappers, before you were born, listserv was/is like Twitter, just without any size limits.

      You just send an email to a server sign up^h^h^h^h^h^h^h follow someone or unfollow.

    2. Re:This is huge news! by acidradio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Young whipper-snappers won't and don't understand the significance of ^H either.

    3. Re:This is huge news! by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes. And USENET was just like web fora, except with all your forums under one powerful interface. And IRC was just like IM, except, well no IRC is exactly like IM.

      Why did we need to invent twitter, web fora, and IM when we had Listserv, USENET, and IRC?

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    4. Re:This is huge news! by Zoxed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > Why did we need to invent twitter, web fora, and IM when we had Listserv, USENET, and IRC?

      The few USENET groups I used to follow basically died due to trolls.
      The "real" users migrated to Web Forums, sometimes funded by advertising, which usually have some degree of Moderation.

      But I really miss the functionality associated with the single interface to all USENET groups, (although you could of course chose *which* tool to use).
      Some people tried to write plugins that converted web forums to pseudo USENET groups, but I think they all failed (I had tried one ages ago to read Slashdot in Xemacs/Gnus.)

    5. Re:This is huge news! by Chrisq · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I remember AOL UK suggesting that the towns Scunthorpe and Pensitone change their names to Socnthorpe and Pennistone because people could not register using them (they caught in the primitive obscenity filter). The absolute anger of citizens of these towns was really amusing I remember one person pointing out that thir town was much older than America, let alone America Online and they were buggered if they would change their name.

      Another classic of cultural insensitivity was when they told people on the Wales regional forum that they had to post in English and Welsh was banned!

  2. This doesn't affect me in the slightest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I moved all my stuff to Compuserve last year.

  3. The end of an era by Ixne · · Score: 3

    Next you'll tell me that FidoNet is going away!

  4. Loss of archives is going to be bad by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From TFA:

    ne list still somewhat active is the discussion list for AOLserver, AOL's open-source Web server software. The administrator for this list moved it to SourceForge, where the AOLserver code is housed. However, the administrator, Dossy Shiobara, noted that there was no immediate way to move the decadelong archives of this mailing list, along with related announcement lists, to SourceForge. Fortunately, much of the content is mirrored on other sites, however.

    Not all of the lists are going to have their archives mirrored. This is going to mean that a fair bit of internet history is going to get lost, and contribute a decent amount of linkrot in the process. While I suspect that most of that will just be inane flamewars, it always saddens me when data that could be preserved isn't preserved. I do hope that someone finds a way to move the archives of the various lists somewhere.

  5. Re:Converting from LISTSERV by corbettw · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check and see if fetchmail can handle it, it does some converting from mail box types to others. Also, procmail might work for you.

    Just make sure you don't accidentally start sending out those old messages all over again. Probably best to do the work offline, just to be safe.

    --
    God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  6. backspace by jabberw0k · · Score: 4, Informative

    Control-H, character 8, is the ASCII code for Backspace, see the ASCII chart.

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion