Uhl in Eagle, ID – No, not that kind of wattage, I'm referring to all the work I've been doing on the recently transitioned Wattage list. The Wattage list is a forum where cyclists can exchange ideas on how to train with a power meter to improve their performance. The list was previously hosted on Topica, but it had some major shortcomings. The biggest problem was a search function that didn't work very well and would only show results up to Oct 2004. Even after repeated attempts to contact Topica's support, I never got an answer why it didn't return all results. Anyway, I made the suggestion to move the list to Google Groups and that opened up a nice flurry of posts! There was some heated discussion, but in the end, most of the key members agreed on the move.
The hard part was extracting all the information off of Topica. No one would move over unless we could import all of the archives into Google Groups. This made sense, as some well-respected people in the field contribute regularly to the list, so the archvies are a gold mine of information. Fortunately, I had some technical help and they were able to get all the messages imported into the Google Wattage group I created.
Then came D-day...
Last night we shut down the Topica list and imported all the Topica users into the Google Group. Since the list didn't have subscription information (Email only, Digest, Web-only, Inactive) we ended up making the executive decision to add everyone as "Email only". This seemed like a good idea at the time, because the majority of the list was probably set to email. But we really didn't think much of the "inactive" people. That's what caused most of the problems. Bad move! We inadvertently set off a flood of email to people who may have subscribed to Topica in the past, but had since switched to another email. So all of a sudden they get a bunch of emails, to both addresses! That in combination with a few other communication, timing and plain old, "oops, I should of thought of that"-type problems, resulted in quite a bit work.
So late last night and most of today, I've been dealing with those problems. Technically, I am the "list owner"—not sure I like that title, I'd prefer "admin"—so I receive all the emails when people click on the "contact list owner" link. I actually don't mind doing it since I was the one who wanted to switch in the first place. I'm sure things will soon die down and everyone will get back to arguing whether strength training has any effect on endurance cycling performance. Personally, I think the short-term pain is worth it. Having done a few quick searches on the new group, it's great! Relevent search results immediately pop up, with text previews highlighting your search terms. Typical Google-goodness...they really know how to do search!
Ironically, though, if you try to search for the actual "Wattage" group itself—not messages within the group—it doesn't show up. I have a feeling this is because they intentionally put a lag time between when you make a Google Group public, and when it shows up in the group search results. I bet a lot of people create groups just to see what it's all about, then delete it or never get back to it.
Another cool thing about Google Groups, is they have features beyond the standard mailing-list stuff. Using the Google Groups Beta front-end, members can create web pages and post files, all fairly easy with no need to know HTML. It looks like Google has their sights set squarely on Yahoo! Groups, so I'm sure even more cool stuff is in the works. I think after the dust settles, everyone will be very glad we moved. That's it for now...I need to get back to my list management duties!
