The Yahoo Groups mailing list for OrigamiUSA members, ousa-members, is being shut down and replaced by a new mailing list.

Why are we doing this? For several reasons:

  1. This list is supposed to be for OrigamiUSA members, but Yahoo makes it hard and awkward to verify membership;
  2. Yahoo reformats all emails to add their own links and cruft, which often breaks people's own formatting;
  3. Yahoo has total access to all your emails and owns their content;
  4. Subscribing to the list is awkward and indirect for users.

What we're going to replace it with is a list on our own server that is run by Mailman, the robust and popular mail server (it runs Origami-L, and we've used it to run all of our internal mailing lists for several years). Mailman alters mail minimally, ensuring that what list members see is pretty close to what you sent, and vice versa.

And perhaps best of all, subscribing and unsubscribing to the new list will be incredibly simple: you just check or uncheck a single box in your account settings for your OrigamiUSA web account to subscribe and unsubscribe. And if you decide to let your membership lapse, you don't have to do anything at all to unsubscribe; it will happen automatically for you. (Subscribing, though, is always opt-in.)

You can subscribe to (or unsubscribe from) the new list here. You'll need to be logged into your web account and a current member of OrigamiUSA.

For the new list, your email address will be the one associated with your OrigamiUSA web account (the same address that you get emailed membership renewal notifications at). Your address will be protected: there will be no general access to postings other than what you receive via email, and no one but the list administrators have access to the full mailing list. Mailman, the list processor, has a well deserved reputation for security.

We hope that our members will find the new mailing list to be easier to use and more pleasant to read, and much happy folding and discussion will ensue!

If you have questions, please check out our FAQ; for user-specific questions, please write to the website team, at website [at] origamiusa.org.

Regards,

The OrigamiUSA WebTeam
Robert, Anne, Jim, and Trevor