The Mailing List

Contents

1. How It Works
2. Normal Delivery
3. Digest Delivery
4. Reply Modes
5. Switching To Or From Digest Mode
6. Help! My E-Mail Address Has Changed!
7. Read This Before Posting A Message To The List
8. Security
9. Other Notes
10. Questions and Other Info

0. Quick Reference

To subscribe to the mailing list, send a plain-text message containing just this line:
subscribe ontvfr
to this address:
majordomo (at) maillist.math.uwaterloo.ca You'll receive automated acknowledgement and instructions about how to communicate with OntVFR list members.

1. How It Works

The OntVFR mailing list is implemented with an automated list server called "Majordomo". You do everything by interacting with this list server via email messages.

For anything involving managing your subscription, including:

• subscribe to a mailing list
• unsubscribe from a mailing list
• retrieve back-issues from the archives
• get help using Majordomo

After you have subscribed, you send messages to the other members of OntVFR on the mailing list by sending your email to the OntVFR list address, which is

Please note that messages sent to the list server must be in plain text, so turn off all that MIME- and HTML-encoding in your mail tool before you try to subscribe, or it won't work.

Your subscription to the list can be in one of two delivery modes, normal or digest. Description and instructions for each follow.

2. Normal Delivery

What is it? Each posted message gets sent to you as a separate, individual message.

If you receive, or want to receive, OntVFR list messages in digest mode, do not follow the directions in this section. Skip down to the digest delivery section.

• To subscribe, send the message subscribe ontvfr to the list server address. (Do not put your e-mail address on the end.)
• To unsubscribe, send the message unsubscribe ontvfr to the list server address.

Do not put your e-mail address on the end of these subscription commands. Once you send in a subscribe message, the server will send you an introductory message about how to use the server and this list.

3. Digest Delivery

What is it? Posted messages are bundled together and sent out as one larger message rather than several smaller ones. This will decrease the number of messages you receive in a day, but it will not change the volume (K-bytes) of messages you receive in a day. Digests are sent out when a certain number of K-bytes has been exceeded.

If you receive, or want to receive, OntVFR list messages in "normal" mode, (non-digest), do not follow the directions in this section. Skip back to the normal delivery mode section.

• To subscribe, send the message subscribe ontvfr-digest to the list server address.
• To unsubscribe, send the message unsubscribe ontvfr-digest to the list server address.

Do not put your e-mail address on the end. Once you send in a subscribe message, the server will send you an introductory message about how to use the server and this list.

4. Reply Modes

Replies by default will go only to the person who posted the message. Please keep that in mind when replying. You will have to manually edit the address of any reply that you want to go back to the list as well. Some mailers have a "reply-to-all" option that will reply to the sender and all recepients of the message. Use your discretion when deciding whether your posting should go to the entire list or only to the person to whom you're replying.

5. Switching To Or From Digest Mode

You'll have to unsubscribe from one list and resubscribe to the other. That's the only way to do it.

6. Help! My E-Mail Address Has Changed!

Don't panic. You can unsubscribe yourself as outlined above. Put your old e-mail address on the line after the unsubscribe ontvfr or unsubscribe ontvfr-digest command (all on the same line, but NOT in the subject of the message). If you are able to send in your unsubscription from your old address, it will work automatically. If it's too late for that and you must unsubscribe your old address while using your new address, be patient, as this situation requires manual intervention by the list administrator who will tend to it as soon as he can.

7. Read This Before Posting A Message To The List

1. Read the list policy statement before posting anything. Your action of subscribing to the list is taken as implicit acknowledgement that you have read and agreed to the terms of the policy statement.
2. Post from the address you subscribed from. If you're not on the list, you can't post to it. The list server rejects messages from non-member addresses as a way to suppress "spam".
3. Use the archives before posting a common question. They're there and easily accessible for your use.
4. Don't send a message containing the keywords "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to the list. The server will think you have sent server commands to the list's address by mistake instead of to the server's address, and it will reject your message. For the same reason, don't put "help" in the subject line, or put "help", "config", "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "signoff" as the first word in any line of your posting. If you do, the server will reject your message.

8. Security

To suppress "spam" and viruses, the list server rejects postings from non-subscribers, postings that exceed a certain size (to prevent large attachments), and postings sent in HTML format. To prevent email address harvesting, non-members are not allowed to ask the list server who the list members are. Various other measures may be taken.

9. Other Notes (please read these if you subscribe)

Did something mysteriously break with your OntVFR subscription? Send a brief note to the list owner describing the problem. If you got a message back from the list server, it is often very helpful to send that along, too. The address of the list owner is and these messages are read by a human.

10. Questions and other information