ECOLOG-L Update to the Ecological Community

Posted by on September 12, 2024

Updated October 28, 2024

Migration is now complete!

ECOLOG-L is now fully functional on Simplelists. Here are instructions.

The ECO community is fully functional on Discourse (though bear with us a bit, we may still need to iron out a few kinks).

You can still participate if you don’t yet have an ESA account! Start your free web account with us today.

  • Log in with your ESA credentials.
  • Ongoing thread topics are viewable from the home screen, or in the respective Categories.
    • You can use the New Topic button to send a message, and add tags to it that you feel are appropriate.
    • Your message should target a Category. Categories are currently structured around ESA’s membership.
  • All authenticated, logged in users can view topics; ESA members in the main membership Category can reply and post.
    • Members of the Categories assigned to each section and chapter may also reply and post in that Category, but all others have read-only access.

Staff is developing how-to materials to navigate the platforms.

Updated October 22, 2024

Last week, we placed a freeze on the GoLightly platform; as of this writing, all subscriptions and archived messages up to that date have been fully migrated to Simplelists. Read details for using the new platform.

The membership community we are building on Discourse is on schedule to launch no later than October 31, and likely sooner.

Updated October 10, 2024

On October 16, we will be placing a freeze on the GoLightly platform that hosts ECOLOG-L and other listservs that serve our membership and community. This will facilitate the migration of archives from ECOLOG-L to the new platform, Simplelists.

We remain on schedule to soft launch ECOLOG-L on Simplelists during the week of October 21. If you are a current ECOLOG-L subscriber, you will receive a broadcast message inviting you to the new platform; we will repeat this broadcast twice more up until October 31. You will be directed to visit the new version of ECOLOG-L’s home on Simplelists, where you will be able to log in using your existing ESA credentials.

For ease of use, following migration, you will still be able to send ECOLOG-L messages directly to ecolog-l@nullcommunity.esa.org.

For Our Other Lists

Other lists hosted on GoLightly are migrating to Discourse, with a soft launch to follow shortly after that of ECOLOG-L. We will be aligning members’ accounts with their existing interests (typically based on their section or chapter membership). Staff will be in touch with the section and chapter chairs, and other group moderators, early next week.

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To our members and friends in the international community of ecologists:

The ECOLOG-L listserv is a well-loved online forum where ESA members and anyone else who joins the listserv can post and receive messages at no cost. There are over 30,000 listserv users who utilize it for a multitude of purposes.

Recently, the platform’s owner informed ESA that it will be discontinued as of October 31, 2024. ESA is 100 percent committed to continue hosting ECOLOG-L at no cost for its members and the larger ecological community.

The ECOLOG-L listserv originally curated by David Inouye transferred to ESA in 2018, and ESA migrated the listserv over to the GoLightly platform. Now, in September of 2024, once again ESA will begin migrating to a new platform.

Our goal is a minimal disruption of service during migration over the next eight weeks under this tentative timeline:

Oct. 21-31:

  • ESA will soft launch ECOLOG-L using the new platform.
  • ESA will freeze the existing platform and back-up the archives.

Nov. 1:

  • ESA will fully relaunch ECOLOG-L on the new platform

ESA member groups currently also use the GoLightly platform; those ESA member groups will be migrating to a separate platform on approximately the same timeline, though members may experience a brief break in service because the ESA member online community is a more complex system with multiple user features than the listserv system. The new ESA member-only platform will be offline for a short period of time.

Would you please help spread the word in your network about the upcoming changes by assuring  people that ESA is committed to continuing ECOLOG-L  and providing this valuable means of communication to the ecological community at no cost? We appreciate your patience with any platform migration hiccups that may occur.

ESA will be communicating and keeping everyone updated through our regular email system, website, social networks and GoLightly.

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