(AFS) FAQ: list policies as of 2 August 2001
Randall Raemon
The domain name shikahr.com.inter.net no longer exists as
of 31 July 2001. The site is now in the domain shikahrsoho.com.
The hosted mailing lists
------------------------
The shikahrsoho site hosts three mailing lists for things Vulcan:
-- Vulcan-L
General forum for discussion of things Vulcan. Politics,
geography, geology, biology, zoology, etc and whatever
other -ology there is, if it about Vulcan, this is the
forum.
-- Vulcan-L-Digest
The batched up compendium of Vulcan-L traffic over the
previous day. Vulcan-L-Digest is for those folks who
want one big email message in their mailbox, rather than
a bunch of individual little messages.
-- Vulcan-Linguistics
A technical forum for development of Vulcan languages.
Very low traffic, and very technical. You must also be
a subscriber to either Vulcan-L or Vulcan-L-Digest to
subscribe to the Vulcan-Linguistics list.
Subscribing and unsubscribing
-----------------------------
All subscribe and unsubscribe requests for should be sent to
the Vulcan-L-Request mailbox, at shikahrsoho.com
for any of the Vulcan related mailing lists hosted at the shikahr
site. Those requests come to me, and I process it manually (kind of,
I have scripts that do a bunch of stuff).
You will likely see in older versions of how-to-signup descriptions
that you should send email to the Majordomo userid. That doesn't
work anymore. While Majordomo is still being used internally, the
shikahrsoho site security policy doesn't allow it to receive email from
outside the shikahrsoho site. Any email sent to Majordomo will bounce
as "user unknown".
Message-Id's
------------
The vulcan-l mailing list has a preprocessor script that all postings
go thru. This script does a number of things. One thing it does is
to change the message-id header to reflect the article number of
posting. This article number corresponds to the file number in the
list archive that I keep.
You'll find the message-id in the header of your vulcan-l traffic.
It looks like this:
Message-Id: <articl...@vulcan-l.shikahrsoho.com>
You can use the message-id to determine the order of email as it
came into the shikahrsoho site. By the time a group of postings get to
you, their order of delivery is most likely radically different
than the order that group was sent in. Simply sort the messages out
into message-id order. (On Unix systems, that can be fairly
straightforward to do. On Windows machines though, I'm not clear
that it is even possible to sort on anything other than date or
sender.)
Similarly, you can determine if you are missing traffic from the
vulcan-l list. All messages are consecutively numbered. If you're
missing a number, you're missing that posting. You should be able
to get it from the archive, provided that I've updated the archive
(which I do as I can, but expect a time lag).
MIME encoded postings
---------------------
The lists don't do MIME. The preprocessor script is set now to
catch any MIME-multipart postings, and bounce them to me as
listowner. What I will typically do, is remove the HTML or whatever,
leaving only plain regular text. Then I'll forward that text on to
the list with a notation that the posting has been edited.
Recognize that having MIME postings bounce to me will mean a delay
in the posting making it on to the list. That delay is subject to
outside constraints, and can be a matter of hours, or days.
Posting address and delivery address
------------------------------------
That preprocessor script allows for subscribers to have multiple
addresses. That is something that Majordomo does not allow, and
proved to be something of a headache for me as the listowner. The
preprocessor bypasses that problem.
If you send mail from several accounts, or have a return mailbox
encoded into your userid, then I can enter your alternate address
onto the "allowed posters" list. This can be completely different
that where you receive mail.
If you want to use multiple addresses, just send me a message (email to
Vulcan-L-Request will do) letting me know, and I'll add your address
in.
If you try to send from an address that's not on the "allowed posters"
list, your posting will bounce to me as listowner to post at my
discretion.
List Moderation
---------------
The vulcan-l and vulcan-linguistics lists are not moderated. However,
if things start getting out of hand (by whatever definition), I will
step in to get things back on the topic of things Vulcan.
Rather than take the entire list moderated, that preprocessor script
lets me moderate by individual. If an email address is not on the
"allowed posters" list, the posting will bounce to me. When things
mellow back a bit, posting privileges would be restored.
New subscribers don't make the "allowed posters" list automatically.
This is intended to trap the drive-by spammer (you know the kind:
sign on to a list, get back the confirmation, then dump...). The way
to make the "allowed posters" list, is to make postings that are
on topic and reasonable. Moderation bounces take time, and jobs
being what they are, time is always at a premium. I don't spend time
where it isn't needed.
Flame wars and trolling
-----------------------
If you want to be on the moderation list, engage in a flame war
or give me a reason to believe that you're trolling. Your posting
will sit in my inbox until I have time to look at it (which could
be a couple of days, schedules permitting), and I will forward
your post to the list, or delete it, at my discretion.
Newsgroup relay
---------------
The vulcan-l mailing list is echoed into the Usenet newsgroup
alt.fan.surak. To minimize the likelihood that junk email address
harvesters will have anything to work with, all postings to the
newsgroup have the header information fully sanitized, and email
addresses are munged into the form <user\@[127.0.0.1]>.
If you want to have email feedback from readers on the newsgroup, you
will need to include an address in your posting, most likely in
the signature line. Be aware that the address harvesters do
(sometimes) scan posting message bodies in addition to the headers,
so having your email address in a human-readable, but not machine-
readable, format is recommended.
An aside: why alt.fan.surak, and not alt.startrek.vulcan? Historical
reasons mostly. alt.fan.surak was created first, and predates the
vulcan-l list itself. The alt.startrek.vulcan newsgroup was created
a year or so later, and immediately involved in a trolling cross-post
war that lasted for 6+ months. It rendered alt.startrek.vulcan
effectively useless since its inception. Alt.fan.surak however has
been largely immune to those problems.
And, a quick historical note: The Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.surak
was created in December 1993. The vulcan-l mailing list was created
in June 1994, as a means to expand the propogation the newsgroup
traffic.
Note: vulcan-l-digest, and vulcan-linguistics are not echoed to any
Usenet newsgroups.
Address forgeries
-----------------
The shikahrsoho site spam blocks will catch most of these. Having all
subscribe and unsubscribe request go to the real-person address of
vulcan-l-request let's me do some authentication on the email headers
by using eyeball checking, and the occasional net probe.
One common problem on the net with mailing lists is the subscriber
list bombing. What happens is that someone gets subscribed to every
mailing list in existence. Invariably the subscribe requests are
forgeries, but sometimes its because somebody's account has either
been hacked or stolen. Forged unsubscribes are not so much of a
problem, but it also happens.
List bombings are a royal pain for me as a listowner. As a rule I
will not do third-party requests. Any request that comes in must
come in from the subscriber address. If for any reason I can't
verify the request, I will email back requesting a confirmation,
and I will send this request to all addresses in the email header.
I will be bureaucratic about it, as I have no assurance that my
email message is going to the proper owner.
--
Randall Raemon
email to owner-vulcan-l or rlr at the shikahrsoho site
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the Vulcan-L list, send an email message
of "unsubscribe vulcan-l" to Vulcan-L-Request at shikahrsoho.com