Subject: Policies for faq-maintainers/faq-maintainers-announce X-Version: $Id: mailing-lists-policy,v 1.32 1997/12/31 19:12:09 pgreene Exp $ Welcome to the faq-maintainers or faq-maintainers-announce mailing list. This document explains the purpose of the lists and some administrative details. In addition to being sent to all new subscribers, it is sent to faq-maintainers monthly and to faq-maintainers-announce approximately every ninety days to refresh people's memories. [A recent copy of this document can be obtained via anonymous FTP as rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/faq-maintainers/mailing-lists-policy If you do not have access to anonymous FTP, you can retrieve it by sending email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the command "send faq-maintainers/mailing-lists-policy" in the message.] ******** How to unsubscribe To unsubscribe from the faq-maintainers mailing list, send email to faq-maintainers-request@consensus.com with the subject "unsubscribe" (without the quotes), from the address you wish to be unsubscribed. Do NOT send email to the list itself asking to be unsubscribed. If you have problems with the list server software, email for help from a human (be sure to mention the list name, faq-maintainers). The faq-maintainers list is no longer run by the *.answers moderators directly. Many thanks to Christoher Allen and Consensus Development Corporation for their assistance. To unsubscribe from the faq-maintainers-announce mailing list, send email to faq-maintainers-announce-request@mit.edu; it will be read by humans. ******** What are these mailing lists? The faq-maintainers and faq-maintainers-announce lists are primarily intended for discussion among (faq-maintainers), or announcements for (faq-maintainers-announce), people on the net who maintain FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) lists or other kinds of periodic informational postings. However, subscribers are not required to maintain FAQs; anyone interested in issues related to maintaining FAQs is welcome to subscribe. Issues discussed on the faq-maintainers list in the past have included: formatting FAQs; how to handle comments about specific commercial products in FAQs; and using software to assist in the posting and maintenance of FAQ postings. Although a wide variety of topics are discussed, using the list for discussions which do not specifically pertain to FAQ maintenance is discouraged. The maintainers of the list may occasionally request that a discussion be moved elsewhere, when they feel that it has strayed too far from the theme of the list. The faq-maintainers-announce list is for announcements only. For example, announcements which would be appropriate include the creation of a new mirror site from which archived *.answers FAQs can be obtained, or the release of a software tool which is particularly useful for FAQ maintainers. The faq-maintainers-announce mailing list has been moderated since April 1994, to prevent unnecessary traffic which doesn't qualify as announcements. Anything sent to the faq-maintainers-announce list also goes to faq-maintainers, so it is not necessary to subscribe to both. ******** How busy and how large are these lists? The faq-maintainers list has several hundred subscribers. Traffic tends to come in bursts -- it averages 3-4 messages per day, but during a burst there may be as many as several dozen messages within a few hours, and in between such bursts, there may be a week of no messages at all. The faq-maintainers-announce list also has several hundred of its own subscribers, and anything approved for it will by default be sent to the faq-maintainers list as well. Traffic on it is very, very low; it is not unheard-of for six months to pass with no messages sent to the list except for a periodic copy of this document. **** Archives All messages sent to the faq-maintainers list after December 31, 1993 are publicly available at . This archive is managed by hand, and messages may take several weeks to appear there. Messages from faq-maintainers are also archived at The Internet FAQ Consortium's WWW mirror, which offers quicker archival, a search facility, and various formats. See . ******** Where to find help with maintaining a posting This section doesn't really "belong" here, but since the question keeps coming up, perhaps this will help. If you want to ask questions specifically of the moderators of *.answers, please send the question to news-answers-request@mit.edu and not to these mailing lists. Two World Wide Web sites which maintain lists of FAQ maintenance tools and information resources are David A. Lamb's page of FAQ Maintenance Aids, at http://www.qucis.queensu.ca/FAQs/FAQaid/ and Infinite Ink's Finding and Writing FAQs and Periodic Postings, at (primary) http://www.jazzie.com/ii/internet/faqs.html (mirror) http://www.best.com/~ii/internet/faqs.html More information about submitting postings to *.answers, and about auto-faq, post_faq, and the mail-to-news server run by the *.answers moderators, can be found in the "*.answers submission guidelines" at rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/guidelines ******** Administrative addresses Please DO NOT send administrative messages to either of the mailing lists themselves. For faq-maintainers: faq-maintainers-REQUEST@consensus.com Mailing list software understands "subscribe", "unsubscribe", and "help", among other commands. For faq-maintainers-announce: faq-maintainers-announce-REQUEST@mit.edu E-mail to this address processed by human beings; any reasonable "command" will be understood. For help with faq-maintainers mailing list software: listmaster@consensus.com Please do not send email to this address unless you are having problems with the automated mailing list software. Be sure to mention the name of the mailing list (faq-maintainers). List owners: news-answers-request@mit.edu The list is "owned" by the *.answers moderation team. Policy questions and changes, archival questions, and other requests which do not concern subscriptions or the actual redistribution of mail to the list members should be directed to this address. Emergencies: listmaster@consensus.com and news-answers-request@mit.edu In case of an "emergency" -- most likely, a mail loop -- please contact both the list administrators and the list owners. Mention the mailing list name and describe the problem as completely as possible. If you recommend the lists to people, make sure to give them one of the administrative addresses, so that they do not send an administrative request to one of the lists themselves. Administrative requests sent to the lists rather than to the administrative request addresses will probably be ignored. Since subscription and unsubscription requests to faq-maintainers-announce are currently handled by people (rather than being handled by an automated mailing list processor), you should not expect an immediate response to requests. Furthermore, there is an an unavoidable delay of approximately one day (and sometimes more) between when we process a request and when the changes propagate to the mailing list servers. **** Addressing email to the mailing lists Address email for faq-maintainers to faq-maintainers@consensus.com. To prevent "spam," only subscribers to faq-maintainers will have their messages distributed by the mailing list software. Address email for faq-maintainers-announce to faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu. When you send email to faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu, we will either approve it and distribute it for you, or reply to you explaining why we feel it is inappropriate for that mailing list. You do not need to be a subscriber to either mailing list. Note that since the faq-maintainers-announce list includes the faq-maintainers list, you should never address an email message to both mailing lists; if you do, subscribers to faq-maintainers may receive duplicates. **** Policy concerning removal from the lists The administrators reserve the right to remove individuals from the lists under extraordinary circumstances. It is difficult to anticipate every reason why someone might be removed from the lists; in general, behavior which is substantially disruptive to the list and which is known by the perpetrator to be inappropriate may lead to removal. An individual who is removed from the lists will be notified of the removal by the administrators. If he or she wishes to appeal the removal, a poll will be taken of the current membership of the faq-maintainers list. If 10% or more of the current membership supports reinstatement, the individual will be returned to the lists. -- The faq-maintainers list adminstrators: ChristopherA@consensus.com (Christopher Allen) and colleagues at Consensus Development Corporation The faq-maintainers-announce list administrators (a.k.a. the *.answers moderators): pgreene@optics.rochester.edu (Pamela Greene) elfchief@lupine.org (Jay 'Whip' Grizzard) darchon@bu.edu (Yoav Shapira) jverne@mks.com (John D. Verne) jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens) [Emeritus] pshuang@mit.edu (Ping Huang) [Emeritus]