It is time!

[Spyros Stravoravdis]

Hello,

As someone who never happened to participate in the list (I subscribed 
in 2011,
long past its heyday, when forums like DCF were far more popular), I'm 
still sad to
hear about the closure, though it makes sense. I always enjoyed reading and
researching through the archives and am glad that they will remain 
accessible
and may even be augmented with the missing years of the 90s.

DCML seemed to embody the spirit of the open Internet, fostering and 
organizing
a very strong community worldwide for a somewhat niche hobby, who managed
to create impressive endeavors like Inducks, building friendships, 
getting in touch
and conversing with existing creators that seemed faraway and, I dare to 
say,
perhaps even inspiring newer creators for a time.

I know for a fact that without DCML / Inducks my interest in Disney 
comics would
have dwindled a long time ago. Instead, they became a fixture of my life 
that
I always seem to come back to, even with periodic breaks. And it's 
always fun to
unexpectedly discover that other people in real life share the same 
passion for them!

So, thank you, Per, for creating the list in the first place!


Slightly offtopic, but for completeness, I'll add that François has uploaded
an archive of the Disney Comics Forum (2007–2015) here:
https://inducks.org/fr/richard/dcf/

There was also an IRC Inducks server, that was still slightly active in 
2014-2015,
when I happened to connect there. I suppose it was decommissioned around 
2017,
when the COA subdomain was retired.

The current English-language places where Disney comics aficionados seem to
hang around are the Feathery Society forum and the Inducks Discord server.

(P.S.: Ten years ago, I created the /r/DisneyComics subreddit, but after 
a while,
I stopped logging to that site. If anyone is interested in moderating 
it, contact me,
although I'm not sure if there's a point; apparently Reddit's mostly
American demographics are not interested in our hobby).


Kind regards,
Spyros

Στις 19/6/2024 7:20 μ.μ., ο/η Per Starbäck έγραψε:
> Hello everyone who is still here!
>
> After a long time with very low traffic it is time to finally
> terminate this mailing list.
>
> The date set is August 3 this summer.
>
> As most of you probably remember I am the one who created and managed
> this mailing list from the start. I wrote a couple of test messages
> before adding the addresses of interested people I had corresponded
> with and who had said they wanted to be part of such a mailing list.
> Then 3 August 1992 I sent the first real message, which is archived
> here:
>
> https://nafsk.se/pipermail/dcml/1992-August/000002.html
>
> Few of you were part of this from the very beginning, but more and
> more Disney comics fans got access to email and got to know about the
> list, and joined.
>
> A prolific time for the mailing list started which gave me a lot of
> pleasure (and a lot of information). I find it almost hard now to
> remember how it was then after various problems later with the list,
> and then the list being dormant for so long. But it was really
> something totally different then; fun and important for me and others,
> connections and friendships were made, and I want to thank all of you
> old-timers who made it what it was back then! (It would be too hard to
> decide where to draw the line on who to mention, so I'll mention no
> names at all.)
>
> Back in 2006 when things were not so great anymore, and my interest in
> Disney comics was at a temporary low, I handed over the list to
> NAFS(k), the "National Donaldist Society of Sweden (quack)" as a way
> to continue the list.
>
> Here is my announcement in 2006 about the transfer, from the list archives:
>
> https://nafsk.se/pipermail/dcml/2006-March/023998.html
>
> I was active in NAFS(k) myself and continued to be part of the 'DCML
> team', but not alone anymore. I thought I was going to quit that
> totally after some time of overlapping with new people, but actually I
> never did, so I have continued to filter spam sent to the list etc.
> during the long time of low list activity. Just a couple of years ago
> I finally transferred the old web pages associated with the list which
> were (somewhat 'forgotten') still at my old university department from
> which I earlier had handled the list (the impetus was that I was
> quitting that job).
>
> Anyway, recently I suggested to the board of NAFS(k) that we should
> finally discontinue the list, and they agreed. It doesn't take a lot
> of resources to continue to manage it, but it seems rather pointless,
> and if someone new finds it and joins now they will probably just be
> dissatisfied when they find out there is no activity here.
>
> The date for termination is set to the 'birthday' of the list, August
> 3, so that the list becomes 32 years old – quite a respectable age for
> a mailing list!
>
> The list *archive* is a treasure which surely will be kept. There is a
> lot to be found there, and it should continue to be a valuable
> resource at least for anyone interested in Disney comics fandom during
> that time. There have been loose plans to convert the archive to a
> nicer format. That will not happen soon at least, but chances for that
> will at least somewhat improve after the shutdown of the list, since
> it makes it easier to handle it when not new incoming messages have to
> be taken into account.
>
> I will end this announcement with the same .sig quote I used back then.
>