Friends of the Road to Santiago and this listserv

[backpack45scb]

Linda, adding my thanks for your listserv and your book. Don't know
how we could have made our 2001 pilgrimage without GoCamino.

I have mixed feelings about replacing it with another US originated
group. Pieter has done very well with Santiagobis as far as providing
a place to get quick and accurate responses relating to planning and
walking the Camino. The needs of pilgrims from the United States are
similar to other pilgrims, outside of travel arrangements to Europe. I
don't think Pieter would object to Santiagobis also being used to
discuss pilgrim gatherings and other activities in the US. It takes a
critical mass of knowledgeable people to make a group successful, and
Santiagobis has that.

Technically it is very easy to setup another Yahoo Group called
GoCamino - takes a few minutes online.  The problem is that msn or
Yahoo groups get a lot of spam and off topic subjects if they are not
mderated in some way. See the msn group CaminoSantiago if you want a
very bad example.  Someone, say Kathy could setup a GoCamino Yahoo
group with memberships requiring approval, and messages from new
members requiring approval. She could create  co-moderators who could
also do any approvals needed - moderators also can drop members, bar
members, etc. Even with co moderators it is a lot of work to take on.

I setup our Camino webpages primarily to give US pilgrims a single
starting point for information, and I am certainly willing to post
meeting info, etc. there, but we travel a lot, so I might go 3 or 4
weeks before updating it.

Ralph Alcorn
http://www.backpack45.com/camino2.html