WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A group of longtime supporters is working on a plan to keep the much-loved community discussion email lists going after Vital Communities said it would pull support for the 38 town-specific listservs it operates.
Vital Communities, a White River Junction-based nonprofit organization, announced its decision on Wednesday and initially stated that its support for the listservs would end Friday and migrate to Front Porch Forum, a Vermont public-benefit corporation that operates town-specific online forums. After community feedback, the organization made the decision to extend the deadline, executive director Ellen Hender said, adding that the exact timeline has not yet been worked out.
“I think the listservs have served a really important role in keeping community folks connected and allowing for the community to get educated in depth on issues that otherwise would not earn the attention of other media or be able to be explained in a social media situation,” F. X. Flinn, a Quechee resident and former Hartford listserv moderator, said in a phone interview. “I firmly believe the listservs have a real role to play going forward and I think it’s important that if they can be kept, that we keep them.”
Flinn and a handful of other longtime listserv supporters, including Stan Williams, of Norwich, and Niko Horster, of Post Mills, started talking about what to do after Vital Communities’ initial announcement went out. While the three are not actively moderating any lists, they have provided support for other list moderators over the years and have stayed well connected. Vital Communities’ announcement was a shock to them.
“What I was astounded by was giving people three days’ notice and not talking to any of the list administrators to give us any notion that this was going on,” Williams said in a Friday phone interview. “If they had, we would have warned them that there was going to be a lot of pushback here.”
On Thursday, the group asked Hender if Vital Communities could wait three months before pulling its support for the town-specific listservs, which have tens of thousands of subscribers.
“We’ve offered to cover the costs for the time period, so there’s no additional budgetary impact for them,” Horster said in a Friday phone interview, adding that the group needs time to set up a separate organization to manage the listservs.
Flinn estimated that it would cost around $10,000 to operate the technology to support the town-specific listservs, which includes cloud-based software.
Hender said Vital Communities has not decided on the extended timeline or the group’s offer yet.
“Over the last few months, Vital Communities has reflected on whether there are adaptations we could make to the listservs to meet the current environment with our available resources,” Vital Communities wrote in its Wednesday announcement. “Ultimately, we have realized that the town-based listservs have outgrown the level of support and expertise that Vital Communities can provide.”
Vital Communities planned on keeping up its topic-specific listservs, including ones for Upper Valley goods, services and events
Hender said that the decision was multi-faceted and not solely due to financial considerations.
“It’s not something that we moved quickly through,” she said. “We spent a lot of time looking at the different options and the reality of what we’re able to support.”
The listservs got their start around 2004, when Stuart Blood started the Thetford listserv, Williams said. Other towns, including Norwich, soon followed, Williams said. The listservs were administered by ValleyNet, a nonprofit organization formed in 1994 to bring dial-up internet to Upper Valley communities. ValleyNet eventually morphed into ECFiber, a community-owned business that supports broadband internet services in the Upper Valley.
“The listservs were set up in part to get the word out about that effort,” said Flinn, who is a member of ECFiber’s board.
Soon, they started being used for other purposes, like posting about town news, events or suggestions for who to contact to plow driveways. In 2014, ValleyNet transferred ownership of the lists to Vital Communities, as its mission shifted to supporting ECFiber.
Williams, who co-founded ECFiber and was a Vital Communities board member at the time of the transition, said that people over the years have told him they start their days by pouring a cup of coffee, then sitting with their town-specific listserv digest where they can skim a list of topics and click on what they want to learn more about. Each listserv has its own set of moderators, who make sure people follow rules, like keeping conversations civil and posting about town-specific events.
“It’s worked for 20 years,” Williams said. “It might last another 20 years.”
Among the listserv users is Tracy Borst, Thetford’s town clerk and treasurer.
“If I post a reminder on the listserv about absentee ballots, over the next 48 hours I get more requests for absentee ballots, so it is being seen and it is resulting in contact,” Borst said in a Friday phone interview.
Listservs have also played an important role for small businesses, said Margaret Loftus, whose family operates Crossmolina Farm in West Corinth.
“We grew because of the listservs,” Loftus said Friday. She posts information about the farm on multiple listservs, including which band is performing at its pizza night and when its Thanksgiving turkeys are ready. “We wouldn’t be what we are without it.”
When Loftus meets new people in town, she suggests they join listservs to find out about what’s going on with the selectboard or other town business.
“We got a free dishwasher,” she said. “We’ve sold and bought cars.”
