The listserv that was cloned: Thetford was the model for many others

When someone has an item to sell or give away, when one is seeking firewood or a pet that has gone missing or has an event to publicize, the first place to go is usually the community listserv. We take the listserv for granted, as something we can depend on being there. We turn to it every day for information, opportunities, and happenings in the community. 

In fact, it was the need for a place to post announcements such as road closures, plus a desire to build community and discuss community issues, that inspired then-software developer Stuart Blood to set up a listserv for Thetford. The Thetford Forum, as it was known, was launched on January 1, 2003. 

Listserv had existed as far back as 1986, when Eric Thomas, an engineering student in Paris, wrote software to manage email lists automatically. Before then the manual handling of every email in a list had grown so cumbersome that lists were in danger of becoming completely unviable. His list management software became known as LISTSERV, a name we all use today.

The listserv that Stuart set up initially ran on the Topica server (now an email marketing company that manages content and messaging for businesses) even though it had certain limitations. By March 1, 2003 the Thetford Forum had 141 users. Stuart acted as the listserv moderator to try to keep the content consistent with the intent of the forum: "A discussion forum for topics specific to Thetford, open to anyone who wants to participate. Residents are encouraged to subscribe and post clear and concise information relevant to Thetford; non-residents may subscribe, and post only if it is relevant to Thetford and its residents." At that time advertising was not allowed, to the chagrin of some users.

It was not quite the first listserv in the Upper Valley. The town of Lyme had started a listserv the previous year, running it on the Dartmouth College server. However Thetford became the first non-Dartmouth listserv in the area. 

Thetford's listserv ran for 14 months on Topica. After the first 9 months Stuart knew things had to change. It had become "clunky" and technically hard to manage as hundreds of people were subscribing. It had one good feature in that the moderator could delete inappropriate listings. And while it didn't bombard users with advertising, it attached "promotional material" at the end of every posting. 

Help was enlisted from the late Bob Raeselis, who was the  Executive Director of Valley Net, a Vermont non-profit Internet Service Provider that advocated for universal internet access to promote increased citizen community engagement.

Bob did some research and came up with Electric Embers, a server located in California, that offered a more appropriate package, with the exception that the moderator could not delete anything. Unlike Topica it was not free, but Valley Net was a community service and was willing to financially support a community email forum, as it was something that aligned with their values.

Behind the scenes, Bob and Stuart had to devise a way to seamlessly move all the subscribers from Topica to Electric Embers, while keeping each subscriber's preferences intact to receive either a Digest of the list or get each email in real time as it was posted. This was tricky as there had to be a changeover between software platforms to the new Sympa electronic mailing list management software, as well as moving everything to a new server (the physical hardware that runs the software). The alternative was to un-subscribe everyone and ask them all to re-subscribe. In the night, between March 7th and March 8th of 2004, the Forum was successfully migrated between platforms and onto the new server.

The personnel at Electric Ember were always very helpful when problems arose. One thing that wasn't always handled seamlessly was Blitzmail, which started as Dartmouth's own proprietary email system. Blitzmail was developed at the college between 1987-88 in rather a rush because the college could not find a suitable commercial product. Indeed, the rapid way it was developed was something of a joke among the programmers, hence the word "blitz." This system was modified in 1993 to support mail folders and was released in 1994 to outside users, including Valley Net. Blitzmail mystified the engineers at Electric Embers who had never seen anything like it before.

For the next four and a half years the Thetford listserv ran on Valley Net with Stuart as moderator. At that juncture the board of Valley Net took over moderating and management. Later Valley Net closed down, and the Vital Communities non-profit assumed the role of hosting the listserv and providing it with free support.

Bob Raeselis was a big fan of the Thetford listserv, so he cloned it and made it available to towns and other groups across the Upper Valley. Today over 50 public groups have listservs, including many Upper Valley towns in both Vermont and New Hampshire, plus organizations like Early Childhood Education, Upper Valley Farmers Discussion List, the VT Transportation Efficiency Network, etc.  There are also many private lists. (Towns in other parts of Vermont favor Front Porch Forum, a commercial service that features advertising.)

In terms of subscribers, the Thetford listserv is one of the largest listservs, with 3,487 subscribers. It is currently moderated by Thetford residents Nadine Carter and Helen Carter. The prohibition on advertising has long since been abandoned. In fact, on Friday Dec 12, all 29 postings advertised events, items for sale, or items sought. Commerce, too, builds community.