Bob and all:
Clayart is indeed going through some growing pains.
It is "owned" by the American Ceramic Society, and is being moderated
by volunteers who have absolutely NO control over what ACerS chooses to do
or not do.
in that, Bob is right. The moderators have little control, all they can do
is approve or disapprove posts to the list
make minor changes etc..
The software being used is also completely outdated. Clayart is being run
on a server
using Listserv software version 1.8, while the newest version is 18.0. That
should tell you something.

In addition, until very recently, ACerS was changing their IT staff more
often than I change socks.
Here today, POOF!, gone tomorrow...no one seemed to know what the
administration password is, etc.
But, things are looking up. There are some very dedicated experienced
volunteers working on the IT problems now,
as well as new staff at ACerS, and some progress is being made. It will get
straightened out.

Remember that Clayart is a group of potters, around 3000 of us, worldwide.
(Our latest member is a
ceramic studio/center in Cambodia, which is amazing to me.) And it's free,
so I tend to overlook a lot of the
problems in exchange for the information and world view that I receive.
Yes, there is a LOT of e-mail,
(3000 people have a tendency to do that g) and so I have learned to delete
threads in which I am not interested.
With Clayart, your delete key is your friend g.
Still, it is worth joining Clayart for the information contained in the
archives
alone, which date back over 12 years now. If you can think of a ceramic
problem, chances are you will
find the answer in the archives. If not, post the question to the list, and
you'll have your answer.

I guess I don't have to say that I'm an enthusiastic supporter. One of the
things for which I will always
appreciate Clayart is the presence of its memebers at NCECA's annual
conference (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts).
The conference is held yearly, a different city each year (next March it
will be in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania).
Of the 6000 attendees for the last conference held in Louisville Kentucky,
over 2500 were members of Clayart.
We had our own hotel (which sold out) for that conference
and we are also getting our own hotel (The Omni William Penn) for this one.
That says something about the power of numbers (of crazy potters g).
Not only do you get to learn from some of the largest "names" in ceramics
online with Clayart, you actually get to go meet
them, share meals, go out on the town, learn, etc..
It's more a big "family". A big, talkative family. And I am thankful to be
a part of it.

Best,
Wayne Seidl
Vice President,
Potters Council of the American Ceramic Society 2007-2008

"Bob Masta" wrote in message

I finally gave up on Clayart last year, even though I was getting the
Digest format just to avoid the above-mentioned Email blizzard.
The problem is (was?) that the moderator just didn't have control
of the Listserv, and apparently nobody was really administering it
who knew what they were doing.

The kicker for me was that Clayart insisted on posting all messages to
the archives, with your Email address clearly visible to bots. So I
was getting several dozen spams a day just due to that. (I had a
separate account for Clayart, never used for anything else, so I knew
that's where they came from.) Other lists "munge" the addresses in
the archives, to make bot harvesting tougher. (Munging is where
you replace " with something like
"MyNameatMynospamHostdotcom", which any human can
figure out but is tougher for a bot.)

(As an aside, the moderator also was getting hit with
tons of spam to the list itself. This is an easy problem for a
Listserv administrator to fix, but the moderator couldn't do it
and didn't want to bother the (nominal) administrator that
was hosting the list for free. So he spent hours each day
dealing with it himself.)

Anyway, when my workload got high enough that I was no
longer willing to put up with the spam, or with wading through
personal and philosophical monologues to get to clay stuff,
I let it go. I guess I'll give it another look if and when things
calm down... maybe they will have gotten the administration
squared away by then!

Apologies for the diatribe...
Bob Masta