[Skywarn_announce] Special Announcement: SKYWARN Email List Transition Update - Sunday 7/5/15 at Approximately 300 PM EDT

[rmacedo at rcn.com]

Hello to all..

**The following is an update on the SKYWARN email list transition. This same email will be sent over the new list as well as the old announcement list. Depending on the results of how the new email list performs with this update being sent out, this will be the last email sent over both lists and we will send new messages via the new SKYWARN email list only. If that changes, it will be stated explicitly in another email list transition update as needed.**

During Sunday July 5th, 2015, approximately 2410 email addresses were migrated from the old SKYWARN email list to the new SKYWARN email list. In addition, approximately 190 new SKYWARN Spotters and Amateur Radio SKYWARN Spotters who were trained in 2015 were added to the new SKYWARN email list. For those folks, you were not added to the old email list to make this transition a bit easier and will only see this email transition message once and likely saw a 'Welcome to the SKYWARN Announcement list' email within the past couple of hours.

There may be some on the original email list who were migrated to the new email list but may have stopped receiving SKYWARN emails due to a problem on the old SKYWARN email list. If that is the case, we welcome you back and hope you will stay on the email list. If you'd like to be removed the 'Welcome to SKYWARN Announcement email list' will have the details on how to unsubscribe or you can simply send me an email to be unsubscribed from the list.

The email address of the new SKYWARN list is skywarn_announce at oak.w1mv.org and those that may use 'whitelists' and email filtering mechanisms can take note of this email address and change things accordingly. The email will have a sub-tag of [SKYWARN_Announce] in the subject and we are soliciting feedback on whether we want to leave that parameter in the subject field or remove it. Some initial feedback from a few spotters have been to change that sub-tag and one spotter requests that it be removed. We will continue taking feedback here before making any changes.

We appreciate everyone's patience as we continue the migration work. For the sake of completeness, I have kept the original email text sent out Saturday Evening regarding the migration work. Again, please let us know of any feedback and concerns.

***Original Text from Saturday Evening July 4th, 2015 email listed below**

Over the next week, we will be executing a migration of the SKYWARN email list to a new system that will have better management features and running on a server that is newer and faster than the current server the current email list is hosted. The current SKYWARN email list has served us very well and has been in service for over 17 years. The list, however, is showing its age with more frequent issues and there is even the possibility that some folks subscribed are not receiving the messages. It is noted that the hosting and maintenance of this list is done free of charge by host service provider, Power Services of NE Inc. and run by Amateur Radio SKYWARN Spotter, N1XTB-Phil McNamara. This is a tremendous service that Phil provides to us and this upgrade is also being done without any cost. We are grateful to Phil and Power Services of NE Inc. for this valuable service.

Within the next few days, all of you subscribed to this current SKYWARN email list will be transferred to the new SKYWARN email list. You will receive an email welcoming you to the list as well as a password and a link that allows you to control how you receive the emails and whether you want to stay on the list or unsubscribe. Similar to the old list, you can also simply send me an email to make any adjustments to your list subscription.

In the introductory email, it states that you can post to the announcement list, however, similar to how we setup the current SKYWARN email list, this new email list is an announcement only list. Only myself and a few select coordinators are able to post to the email list so that the traffic stays to pertinent announcements and keeps the emails that come from the list relatively low and specific to pertinent information on storms and severe weather including post storm and post severe weather messages, announcements on SKYWARN training, weather conferences and workshops and any other pertinent SKYWARN related information. If you post to the email list, it will end up with the moderators versus going out to the entire email list.

The new email list will have a sub-tag of [SKYWARN_Announce] in the subject line. This parameter is configurable. If there is any feedback on having this in the subject line, please let me know.

It is noted that those SKYWARN Spotters who were trained in 2015 and signed up at a 2015 SKYWARN Training session for the email list system were not added to the old email list. They will be added to the new system. This was to avoid any issues with the old system and to allow for entry into the new email system that we will be using going forward.

It is possible that we will need to send out a few test emails during this process. We appreciate everyone's patience if this is needed and will try and be judicious with the number of test emails needed. There could also be unforeseen issues with the transition and subscription process to the new email list. To date, the list is working well with a small subset of users that were picked for testing. It is possible that as we expand to the entire list (roughly numbering around 3000), this could expose issues that a smaller subset of the list will not find. We will work through any of these issues as quickly as possible. The current email list will be left up for some time before being decommissioned once we have a high level of confidence in the new SKYWARN email list system.

We appreciate everyone's patience as we do this transition. Please contact me with any questions, problems or suggestions during this transition process. Thanks to all for their continued support of the NWS Taunton SKYWARN program.

Respectfully Submitted,

Robert Macedo (KD1CY)
ARES SKYWARN Coordinator
Eastern Massachusetts ARES Assistant Section Emergency Coordinator
Home Phone #: (508) 994-1875 (After 6 PM)
Home/Data #: (508) 997-4503 (After 6 PM)
Work Phone #: (508) 346-2929 (8 AM-5 PM)
Email Address: rmacedo at rcn.com
http://ares.ema.arrl.org
http://www.wx1box.org
Like us on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/wx1box
Follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/wx1box