These mailing lists are here for the use and enjoyment of the paddling community. They're a small attempt to repay that community for what it's given us; we hope it works.
To maximize both of those (use and enjoyment) requires the cooperation of everyone who uses them. This is a quick list of a few policies that we hope will help everyone understand what to do and what not to do. These are pretty typical of all Internet mailing lists, so you'll be able to apply what you learn here in many other places.
What's a mailing list? A mailing list (also known as a "reflector") is a group of people who communicate using a single email address -- the address of the mailing list. Any message sent to that address is forwarded (or "reflected") to everyone on the mailing list.
Every mailing list has a purpose or a topic area. Some of them overlap. Feel free to send your message to multiple mailing lists, as long as it's appropriate for each one. Note that you must be a member of a mailing list in order to send messages to it. (Why? Because this is what all responsible mailing list managers do in order to keep a lot of spam off the lists.)
Just about all of these mailing lists are unmoderated. That means that whatever you send out will go to a lot of people fairly rapidly. A few of these lists are moderated, which means that whatever you send out will have to be approved (by the moderator) before it goes out. Check the description for each list to find out which ones are which.
What's a majordomo? It's a program that automates the process of subscribing/unsubscribing to mailing lists, among other things. Majordomo, mailman, ezlm, and lyris are among the most modern, widely-used, and technically advanced programs of this type. There are also obsolete programs like "listserv" -- which was widely used on the defunct BITnet network, and sometimes accounts for confusion when people call mailing lists "listservs". Majordomo is vastly more powerful than listserv; it also complies with more Internet standards, executes much faster, and is much more secure -- which is why we use it.
Sorry for being so emphatic, but this is a common mistake. And if you make it, you will uselessly annoy anywhere from dozens to thousands of people, none of whom can do what you are asking them to do.
To subscribe to any mailing list, send
subscribe mailing-list-name
in the body of a message to majordomo@rockandwater.net. (Majordomo ignores the "Subject" line.)
To unsubscribe to any mailing list, send
unsubscribe mailing-list-name
in the body of a message to majordomo@rockandwater.net.
Example:
subscribe foo
unsubscribe blah
will request that majordomo subscribe you to the "foo" mailing list and unsubscribe you from the "blah" mailing list.
As a reminder, the instructions for unsubscribing are contained in the footer of every message sent through every mailing list.
If for some reason you get confused, you can get un-confused by sending the following message:
help
in the body of a message to majordomo@rockandwater.net, and majordomo will explain to you what's going on. So,
See the section just above this for instructions on how to do steps 1 and 3.
If you can't do these steps, and in this order, because you no longer have access to your old address, then do steps 1 and 2, then do this instead of step 3: send
unsubscribe mailing-list-name your-old-address
in the body of a message to majordomo@rockandwater.net.
This step will require manual intervention by the list-owner, so be prepared for questions as to who you are and why you're doing this. And note that unauthorized attempts to manipulate the subscriptions of third parties will most likely be one of the very last things you'll ever do with your current Internet account.
The most common problems are:
1. HTML-formatted email. Majordomo doesn't understand HTML; neither do most well-designed mail clients. You'll need to configure YOUR client to stop generating mail in HTML and to generate it in ASCII only.
You should do this anyway -- sending HTML-formatted mail is very rude, unless the recipient has specifically asked for it (and has a client that understands it). It's also wasteful: it adds 300-500% to the size of your messages without adding any content.
2. The inclusion of extra text. Majordomo understands a limited set of commands; it doesn't understand English text ("thanks") or your signature (with your address/phone/etc.) or anything else. When issuing commands to majordomo, don't include ANYTHING in the message except the commands.
If you happen to use an Internet service that forcibly appends material to every one of your messages, then you can tell majordomo where to stop paying attention by putting "end" on line by itself. Majordomo won't read anything past that. Example:
subscribe foo
unsubscribe blah
end
Messages addressed to mailinglist@rockandwater.net (where mailinglist should be replaced with the list you're sending to) will be delivered to all list members, including yourself. Note that you must be a member of a list in order to send messages to it.
Normal rules of mailing list etiquette apply. If you don't know these rules, please take the time to learn them before participating in this or any other mailing list.
Here's a quick summary of those:
ASCII TEXT: Send your messages in ASCII text only. Do NOT send them in HTML; do not send them in ASCII and HTML. Hopefully, you mail client is already configured to do this, but if not, please take care of it before sending anything. Please also turn off the automatic inclusion of any attachments (e.g. "vcard", WINMAIL.DAT, and so on).
ATTACHMENTS: Try to avoid using attachments. Absolutely avoid attachments in proprietary formats, because (a) they are likely to be quite large (b) many recipients' mail systems block them in because of the risk of viruses and (c) a great many of the recipients will be unable to do anything with them other than throw them away. These formats include Word, WordPerfect, Excel, PowerPoint, BMP and others.
If you must include an attachment, make sure that it's in an open format which can be read on many computing platforms. These formats include HTML, JPG, GIF, PDF, and others. Note that quite often the best way to share a large file (such as a picture) is to put it on the web and just send out the URL. Also note that excessively large attachments will probably be rejected either by our mail systems or that of many recipients.
DATE/TIME: Set the date, time and time zone correctly on your computer, so that fellow subscribers who choose to read messages in chronological order can do so.
SUBJECT: Please pick an appropriate and meaningful "Subject" line for your message. Please preserve the "Subject" line of previous messages when following up.
LINE WRAP: Turn on line wrap in whatever-it-is that you use to compose messages. Messages with lines that are hundreds of characters long are hard to read and even more difficult to edit in a response.
SIGNATURES: No huge signatures, please. Four lines is the de facto Internet standard limit. Avoid the temptation to place ASCII graphics in your signature.
DISCLAIMERS: Do not include legal disclaimers: they're worthless, unenforceable, and rude. (And, by subscribing to any list hosted here, you agree that any and all such disclaimers are null and void and overriden by our policies in perpetuity.)
ADVERTISING: Please do not include "boilerplate" advertising from your ISP in your messages: you don't need to inflict the advertising that pays for your Internet access or email account on other list members. Your ISP or email service provider should have a way to disable these ads: if not, get a new one that does.
RETURN-RECEIPTS: A. Please do not include "return-receipt" headers in your messages. Attemping to invade the privacy of subscribers by doing so constitutes abuse. B. Please configure your mail client properly -- i.e. so that it NEVER acknowledges "return-receipt" headers. Nobody on the list cares when or where you read your mail, especially its administrators.
EDITING: Edit heavily when following up. That means deleting everything except the specific text that you're responding to. Be sure to correctly attribute remarks to their author and not to someone else.
FOLLOWUPS: When following up, place your reply BELOW the text you're quoting, not above it. (Some broken or misconfigured software incorrectly advises you to do the reverse.)
REPLYING: Consider responding only to the author instead of the entire mailing list. Consider strongly if your response is a "me too" or "sign me up" or a "thank-you".
DISCUSSIONS: But if the message you're sending is part of an ongoing discussion, and you want everyone participating to your response, be sure that it goes to the address of the mailing list (so that everyone will see it).
FLAMES: Consider responding only to the author if you're going to flame their socks off.
RECIPIENTS: DO NOT include large lists of recipients in addition to the mailing list address. Especially DO NOT Bcc those recipients. (Why? Because you will cause some people to get the message twice -- for which they will complain to us; because you will cause some people to ask to be removed from a mailing list they're not on; because you will cause some people not to get the message at all since the maximum header size will be exceeded. And because this is a really rude. If you want people to see traffic sent to the list, ask them to subscribe to it.)
UNSUBSCRIBING: Don't even think about sending an "unsubscribe" message to the mailing entire list. Hint: "majordomo".
JUNK: Do not send junk traffic like: unrelated jokes, virus warnings, chain letters, urban legends, spam. If you have antivirus protection on your computer/network, make certain that it does not emit warnings via mail.
PROBLEMS: Don't send a message more than once. If you think something has gone wrong, notify us and we'll find out what happened.
PATIENCE: Be patient. Not everyone reads their mail as often as you do. And machines go down, network links fail, and so on. Your life will not end if you have to wait a day or two.
SPAM: Do not spam these mailing lists. Do not attempt to collect the names of all the subscribers in order to spam them directly.
(new) AUTORESPONDERS: It is strongly recommended that you not use autoresponders, e.g. "vacation" programs or anti-virus software which mails out warnings. But if you do, then you MUST ensure that under no circumstances will those autoresponders send a message (a) to the mailing list address or (b) to anyone who has sent a message to the mailing list. Non-compliance with this is extremely abusive and may result in permanent removal from all lists, as well as further measures.
Note that the common thread in nearly all of the above is that each serves to keep the volume of traffic down, and to ensure that everyone who reads your messages can get something useful from them.
If you want to ask questions about these policies, or you want to convince us to change them, or you want to gripe about them, please drop us a line. We try to be as flexible as we possibly can while maintaining the viability and usefulness of the mailing lists that we operate. Please realize that none of these policies are arbitrary, and that they are derived from decades of experiences, as well as extensive consultation with other experienced mailing list managers.
For a rather tongue-in-cheek approach to mailing list etiquette, see: Miss Mailers Answers Your Questions on Mailing Lists.
Please don't send out messages in HTML. Here's why:
1. HTML doesn't work well in email, mostly because it wasn't designed for email.
2. Not everyone has an email client that understands HTML. Some people can't choose their email client -- either because of the computing platform they use, or the network environment they work in, or for other reasons (see below).
3. Some people who work in secure environments purposely do not have an email client that understands HTML because of the large number of security vulnerabilities that having one would expose them to. (Example: "web bugs", single-pixel transparent images, which can reveal information to senders about when you read your mail, where you are when you do it, and so on.)
4. Other people are forbidden from having HTML-enabled clients by their network administrators because of #3.
5. Other people will never see your full message -- because it will pass through a mail gateway/filter that strips off HTML and/or attachments in order to avoid the security, worm and virus problems associated with them. These are becoming increasing widespread.
6. Other people will never see your message at all -- because of mail gateway/filters which simply discard or reject such messages. And you, the sender, may not be notified that this has happened.
7. Formatting your plaintext message with HTML adds considerable size to it -- usually between 300% and 500%.
8. Most automatic HTML markup tools (like the ones used in email clients) generate very bad HTML. Your message may end up looking very different to recipients than it does to you. Or it may be garbled, because some tools use non-standard HTML markup.
The bottom line is that if you wish to reach as large an audience as possible with a message that they can all read, then using standard ASCII text -- with an 80-column line wrap -- is still, far and away, the best way to go. And given current trends, it seems likely to stay that way for at least the next several years.
WHAT TO DO:
If your email client generates HTML, or ASCII text and HTML, please use the configuration options in it to disable HTML and enable ASCII text only. (The precise details of how to do that will vary with your client; in many cases, the place to start is the "Preferences" or "Options" screen. It will often have three settings: "Send text", "Send HTML", or "Send both"; pick the one that's marked "Send text".)
Please don't send out documents (attachments) in proprietary formats.
1. Not everyone can read them, because not everyone uses the same computing platform that you do. And not everyone has the same versions of software or even the same software that you do.
2. Proprietary formats, notably Word and Excel, are well-known for their ability to quickly propagate viruses and worms. As a result, most users have now been trained to discard such documents immediately after receiving them via e-mail.
In some companies, opening a Word or Excel document received from an external source is a termination offense, due to the risk that it imposes on the network environment.
3. Because of #2, an increasing number of network administrators are either filtering out attachments in proprietary formats or completely blocking/discarding messages which contain them. Many members of rockandwater.net's mailing lists receive their mail at sites which do this, and each time messages with attachments are sent out, a large number of rejection messages are received at rockandwater.net. indicate that such blocking/discarding is in place at their sites.
4. Proprietary document formats bloat the size of the information they contain from 300% to 1000%, depending on the information and the format. This imposes an additional load on every mail system involved in transmitting the message, while serving no useful purpose.
5. Proprietary document formats, while somewhat useful in homegenous network environments, are not very useful in the Internet environment, because of 1-4. Far more effective communication can be achieved by using Internet standard formats, which are nearly always readable by all users, on all computing platforms, anywhere in the world, and which pose far less risk to recipients. In order of preference, those are:
It's almost always the case that ASCII text is sufficient. Occasionally, HTML is useful in order to show a document with some degree of formatting. (Although the bodies of mail messages should not be written in HTML.) On those rare occasions, when the actual appearance of a document is critical, PDF is probably the current best choice. Note that PDF readers exist for dozens of computing environments, and that they're free of charge.
Messages are archived and available through rockandwater.net's web site.
The lists of subscribers to rockandwater.net's mailing list are confidential, and are not available to anyone, for any reason. We try to protect the privacy of our subscribers from both prying eyes and from the spammers who are always eager to collect more addresses to spam.
The copyright on each message belongs to its author. The copyright on the compilation belongs to rockandwater.net. (This isn't here to take anyone's rights away. We have no intention of doing that. It's here to stop unscrupulous people from archiving the list and then reselling it, or access to it, for profit without consulting or compensating the authors.)
Ads by individuals selling (or buying) are welcome; this includes people running "shade tree" or "garage" businesses to help support their paddling activities. Please mark the "Subject:" line of any such messages with "AD:" at the beginning.
Ads by commercial businesses: talk to us first. We don't want to exclude you, but we do want to be sensitive to the requests of subscribers that they not be subjected to lots of advertising.
Note: disregarding the above will probably get you blacklisted as a spammer, not only here, but in a very large number of other places.
We employ a number of measures designed to prevent spammers from joining our lists, sending mail to our lists, or retrieving the list of subscribers' addresses. Most of these are beyond the scope of this document, but one thing to note is that to send messages to one of our mailing lists, you must be a member of that mailing list.