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The Madonna Mailing Lists : The Madonna Mailing List
| June 30, 2008 |
| May 29, 2008 |
| May 12, 2008 |
| April 28, 2008 |
| April 16, 2008 |
Past Moderators: Joe Barco, Jim Simpson, Emily Bell
Founded: March 1, 1993
Closed: June 1, 2002
This list was an open forum to post information, state opinions and discuss Madonna's music, acting and anything Madonna-related that was worth talking about.
Why did we do this? The lists originally served a unique purpose: to bring Madonna fans across the internet together and provide them with a place to discuss Madonna, post information, and buy/sell memorabilia and music. As time went on, and more people joined the net, the list fragmented into smaller lists to deal with the diversity in content.
Meanwhile, other online services were appearing and becoming available for the average Internet user, such as chat rooms, discussion boards, and most importantly, web sites.
The Madonna Mailing List was no longer what it once was. Originally, the list was an unmoderated forum inside which anything went. Over the past few years, moderation became a necessity, due to the overwhelming number of people on the Internet. Moderating a list isn't such a bad thing. Someone just has to make sure to process all of the messages. A slight controversy follows moderation around: censorship. Then again, most self-respecting people crying censorship would be appalled at an unmoderated forum.
Even moderation had its difficulties: as a moderator, you must read every message, which included checking for viruses and cleaning out SPAM. Over 60% of the e-mail to the lists was SPAM. It was no longer possible to easily moderate these lists. We just no longer had the time to provide the best service possible.
Now that there are sites and services out there which provide real-time discussion possibilities for Madonna fans, we felt comfortable ending this particular venture. There are many places out there which provide a similar service, without the wait, and without moderation. The primary purposes of madonna and madonna-digest have been obviated by new application technologies available to the average Internet user.