>Frank Elson wrote:
>"Now you can try to fool yourselves as much as you like but that split was
>not
>over suspension systems although that provided a nice little excuse. It was
>over the completely different attitudes between owners of 'new' vehicles and
>owners of 'old' ones, between poseurs and enthusiasts, between cruisers and
>off-roaders... but not about suspension systems.
Frank, I hate to burst your bubble but you are wrong on this one.
Having been just a little involved in the list split, I have a slightly
different take on why it happened.
LRO got split off from the original generic British car mail list in
early 1990. Between 1990 and 1994 the list was primarily American series
Land Rover owners with a large contingent of UK enthusiasts, another of
Australian enthusiasts and a few others from around the world. Meanwhile
around 1995 The Discovery and D90 had been introduced into the US and
there was an avalanche of new internet users discovering e-mail lists.
Until then, the primary list traffic was concerned with series
maintenance and upgrades, club events and off road trips. Suddenly there
was this big group of vocal new people appearing who were complaining
abut dealer service, water leaks and rust. New list topics were added
like installing upgraded CD changers, how to get scratches out of paint,
computer codes, and electric seat adjustment.
None of that was relevant to the series owners who were the long term
list citizens . e-mail traffic swelled big time and some days 2/3rds or
better did not relate to series rigs. Range Rovers and Discoverys have
no parts in common with a series II Land Rover. On board computers?
Warranty? Coil what? leaks? (just make sure you have openings in the
floor for the water to flow out).
The list was split to reduce the total volume of e-mails and to increase
the percentage of e-mails that are relevant to the people on the lists.
This is the pure and simple bottom line.
RRO was created for Range Rover and Discovery people. The Defender crowd
have a foot in each camp and eventually gave up and started the D90 mail
list.
At that time local lists were started too so most UK and Austrailan
memebers went off to their regional lists leaving LRO as a primarily
North American list.
SO I hate to burst your bubble Frank but the split had to do with the
quantity and relevancy of the e-mails on the list. And it was made by
splitting off the vehicles who did not have any parts in common with the
series rigs.
The hard part was trying to convence the coiler owners to move coil
related threads off the now series only e-mail list and onto the coiler
e-mail list. That's why even today sometimes people get reminded that
the LRO list is not an appropriate venue for coiler related questions or
threads.
Last time I heard, I was banned for participating in any Flatlander Land
Rover club events because of my participation in the list split war. It
was the best of days and the worst of days.
TeriAnn Near Santa Cruz, California
My old car 1960 Land Rover 109 owned since 1978
My new car 1961 Triumph TR3A owned since 1986
"Who could ask for anything more"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Jul 01 2001 - 14:25:44 EDT