[Durham INC] Neighborship

[Dan Singer]

Hello.  I manage the Yahoo group for NPNA (Northgate Park), and am also the
treasurer.  We spoke with Harmut a year or so ago (only via email for myself).
I had a few concerns.  I like that it is more or less a local product.  I like
that it's a common place for area n'hood networking.  I did not like that it is
run by one person.  I had concerns about things like reliability, backups,
availability, longevity.  When I asked Harmut about what happens to the system
if something were to happen to him, I did not get the impression that he took it
seriously, or not in a way that satisfied me, anyway.  ("I'm in good health" was
the gist of the response.)

While Yahoo, Google, etc., certainly won't be around forever and may not remain
free, I think it's unlikely that they would go away suddenly, become abandoned,
get hacked and lose all of their data, have a catastrophic 'event', have a
manager that develops an attitude.

I admit that the Yahoo group model has some shortcomings, eg, the 'owner'
concept.  How does an organization own a yahoo group, when any one person with
the owner user/password can hijack and/or delete the group?  If there's one
owner, and that person has a bad accident, the group could atrophy.  It is a
free service, so good luck with customer service.

Dan