This is an e-mail automatically sent to the MacGroup mailing list once per month. It contains some administrivia about list usage. Please store it in a safe place in case you need it.
Additional questions about list management should be send to macgroup-admin at erdos.math.louisville.edu. Here are the questions. To find the answer, search on [n], where n is the number of the question. 1. How do I unsubscribe from MacGroup or MacGroup-Digest? 2. How do I subscribe to MacGroup or MacGroup-Digest? 3. What's the difference between MacGroup and MacGroup Digest? 4. How do I post messages to the lists? 5. What kinds of messages can be posted to the lists? 6. Will you give me a list of all subscribers to the lists? 7. Are the lists hosted on a Macintosh? [1] How do I unsubscribe from MacGroup or MacGroup-Digest? To do this, you must send a command to, Majordomo, the software that serves the list. This is done by sending it an e-mail message. If you are unsubscribing from MacGroup, send your message to macgroup-request at erdos.math.louisville.edu If you are unsubscribing from MacGroup Digest, send the message to macgroup-digest-request at erdos.math.louisville.edu In either case, the only thing to appear in the message should be the single word unsubscribe Make sure your mailer does not automatically append anything else to the message, and it's best to send the message as plain text e-mail. The return address on your message must be in the database of subscribers, so send the message from the same account you use to receive mail from the list. You should get an acknowledgement from the Majordomo software a short time after you unsubscribe. If this acknowledgement does not appear, something went wrong. More information about unsubscribe and other commands is available by sending e-mail containing the single word "help" to majordomo at erdos.math.louisville.edu. If you change e-mail accounts, please remember to unsubscribe from your old one and subscribe under your new address. [2] How do I subscribe to MacGroup. Anyone can subscribe to the MacGroup or MacGroup Digest lists. To do so, you must send a command to, Majordomo, the software that serves the list. This is done by sending it an e-mail message. If you are subscribing to MacGroup, send your message to macgroup-request at erdos.math.louisville.edu If you are subscribing to MacGroup Digest, send the message to macgroup-digest-request at erdos.math.louisville.edu In either case, the only thing to appear in the message should be the single word subscribe You should get an acknowledgement from the Majordomo software a short time after you subscribe. If this acknowledgement does not appear, something went wrong. More information about subscribe and other commands is available by sending e-mail containing the single word "help" to majordomo at erdos.math.louisville.edu. [3] What's the difference between MacGroup and MacGroup Digest? Both have the same content. Subscribers to MacGroup get the messages one at a time, as they are sent. Subscribers to MacGroup Digest get all the messages since the previous digest as one long message. The digests are generated whenever the queued messages exceed 80K bytes, or at 5:15 p.m. daily, whichever comes first. The digested version of the list is still somewhat experimental. Because of the dozens of different combinations of character sets and formatting regularly used in e-mail, it's no easy job to cleanly concatenate the messages when the digest is created. Many lists solve the problem by requiring all posters to adhere to a strict set of rules. We're trying a different approach; we're developing a program to parse the various formats into a common form. For this reason, you'll occasionally see unexpected formatting problems on the digest as we experiment with different ways to mangle the messages posted to MacGroup into a form suitable for MacGroup Digest. You can help when you see a possible formatting error by calling it to our attention. [4] How do I post messages to the lists? To post a message to the discussion lists, just send an ordinary email message to macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu. This message will be automatically distributed to all 150+ subscribers. Only subscribers are allowed to post messages, so be sure to send the message from the same email address you use to receive messages from the list. If the return address on the message is not in the subscriber list, the message will be rejected. There is no moderation on the lists, so be careful what you post. When your message is sent, it will be immediately forwarded to all list subscribers. There are a few nuances to posting that are sometimes nuisances. First, the list management software, Majordomo, is set to look for certain key words in the subject of messages to avoid administrative commands being posted to the list. These include words such as subscribe and unsubscribe. Messages posted with these key words in the subject are likely to be rejected. Any line containing the string +++ will not appear in the digest. Second, only those subscribed to the list may post to the list. All other messages are rejected. The way Majordomo determines membership is from the sender's e-mail address. So, if you want to post to the list, you should probably send the message from the same account at which you receive mail from the list. (Or set your mail software to have an appropriate return address.) The reason for this requirement is to keep the spammers off the list. [5] What kinds of messages can be posted to the list? Any message that concerns Macintosh computers. The connection can even be quite tenuous. This includes computer items for sale and commercial events and seminars with Macintosh themes. When in doubt, ask first. The answer will probably be to go ahead and post it. The list is closed to general spam mail, and we have gone to some trouble in our efforts to keep spam off this list. We do not consider advertising for Mac-related products to be spam, in the context of the MacGroup list. [6] Will you give me a listing of all subscribers to the lists? No. [7] Are the lists hosted on a Macintosh? Unfortunately, no, although they could easily be hosted on Mac OS X. The current hardware is a Linux server with dual Pentium III processors. The list management software is Majordomo, augmented by some custom Perl routines due to Jerry Yeager. If someone wants to donate a Macintosh on which to host MacGroup, we'll be happy to entertain that idea. Until then, we have better things to do with our Macs. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
