It seems to me the charter of this mailing list isn't all that well
defined itself, I suggest that J.Kamens write one and periodically post
it. Virtually any topic that is brought up, it seems, quickly leads to
flames and a lot of people unsubscribing. A charter would help
differentiate it from other related lists, too.
1) The *.answers moderators have been working on a charter/policy
document for the faq-maintainers and faq-maintainers-announce mailing
lists, and have started sending it to all new subscribers. We will
probably also at some point start sending it to the mailing lists
periodically (although not too often, so that people won't get annoyed
by it). I believe I mentioned this quite recently in a message to the
list, so it should not be news. I've appended a copy of the policy
document to the end of this message.
2) I don't think the "charter of this mailing list" is incredibly
ill-defined. The "Introduction to the *.answers newsgroups" document
explains, in my opinion quite clearly, what the purpose of the list
is.
As I said in my recent "ENOUGH!" message, I do not believe that the
recent discussion about reprinting and/or making money from FAQs is
inappropriate for this list. What I believe is inappropriate is
unnecessary flaming and ad hominem attacks. Then again, I believe
that's inappropriate on *any* newsgroup or mailing list not
specifically intended for it.
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@security.ov.com
[begin reference inclusion]
Subject: Welcome to faq-maintainers/faq-maintainers-announce!
Version: $Id: mailing-lists-policy,v 1.5 1994/01/11 04:11:28 jik Exp $
Welcome to the faq-maintainers or faq-maintainer-announce mailing
list. This document explains the purpose of the lists and some
administrative details.
******** 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) postings. However, subscribers are not
required to maintain FAQs; i.e., anyone interested in issues related to
maintaining FAQs is welcome.
Issues discussed on the faq-maintainers list in the past have included:
formatting FAQs; how to handle commens 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. If you would like to make an announcement but you are not
sure it is appropriate for faq-maintainers-announce, please ask the
maintainers of the list, by writing to to the administrative address
given below, and they'll let you know. The maintainers of the list will
not view kindly the sending of inappropriate material to the list, and
its subscribers won't be too happy either.
******** How busy and how large are these lists?
The faq-maintainers list contains several hundred names. Traffic tends
to come in bursts -- it averages three to four messages per week, but
during a burst there may be as many as several dozen messages in a
single day, and in between such bursts, there may be weeks of no
messages at all.
The faq-maintainers-announce list contains a couple hundred names, and
in addition automatically includes everyone subscribed to the
faq-maintainers list. Traffic on it is very, very low (e.g., it is not
unheard of for six months to pass with no messages sent to the list).
******** Administrative details
**** Administrative address
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or make any administrative requests or
comments, send mail to faq-maintainers-request@mit.edu. DO NOT send
administrative messages to either of the mailing lists themselves.
Furthermore, do not initiate "meta-discussions" on the lists about
whether a particular message or discussion was appropriate; such
discussions tend to waste bandwidth without accomplishing anything. If
you believe that an announcement or discussion was inappropriate,
contact the maintainers of the list and we'll take care of it.
If you recommend the lists to people, make sure to give them the
administrative address, so that they do not send an administrative
request to one of the lists. Note that administrative requests sent to
the lists rather than to the administrative request address will
probably be ignored.
Since subscription and unsubscription requests 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 it our
changes propagate to the mailing list servers.
**** Bounces
Because of the current configuration of the mailing list servers,
bounces from messages to the lists are sometimes returned to the sender
of the message rather than to the maintainers of the lists. If you
receive bounces in response to a message you sent to one of the lists,
please forward them to faq-maintainers-request@mit.edu.
DO NOT write to us explaining how we can fix the configuration so that
bounces will get sent to us. We know how to do that, but we do not have
control over the software on the mailing list servers. The people who
do have said that they'll fix the problem eventuallly.
When an address on one of the lists bounces, and we cannot confirm that
the bounce was caused by a transient problem, we will try for at least
three business days to find a working address for the subscriber or to
get the appropriate site postmasters to fix the problem. If the problem
cannot be resolved in that time, we will remove the address from the
mailing list.
**** Archives
We have available to us an archive of all messages sent to the lists
since their creation. Although we cannot make archives of messages sent
prior to December 31, 1993 publicly available, we may be able to search
our archives for a specific message or discussion. If you would like us
to find something in these archives for you, please contact us at the
administrative address.
You should be aware that any messages sent to the list after December
31, 1993 may be made publicly available, since recent changes in our
handling of the lists have made it possible for us to offer a public
archive. This archive is not yet available, since details about it have
not yet been finalized. We must emphasize that you should not assume
that the lists are private -- public archives of traffic from 1994 and
beyond WILL eventually be available.
**** Addressing mail to the mailing lists
Send mail to faq-maintainers by addressing it to
faq-maintainers@mit.edu. Similarly, address mail for
faq-maitainers-announce to faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu. Since the
faq-maintainers-announce list includes the faq-maintainers list, you
should never address one piece of mail to both mailing lists; if you do,
subscribers to faq-maintainers may receive duplicates.
When sending mail to faq-maintainers-announce, you should send it in
such a way that replies go to either you alone or to you and the
faq-maintainers list i.e., the faq-maintainers-announce list is for
announcements only, and discussion of announcements should take place
somewhere other than on faq-maintainers-announce.
For example, if you wanted to send an announcement to
faq-maintainers-announce list with discussion of it taking place on the
faq-maintainers list, you could use these headers lines:
To: your_own_address@host.org
Reply-To: faq-maintainers@mit.edu
X-Actually-Distributed-To: faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu
BCC: faq-maintainers-announce@mit.edu
If you want to write to faq-maintainers-announce and are unsure of how
to do so properly, please contact us at the administrative address for
assistance, or send your message to us and ask us to resend it to the
list for you.
-- The faq-maintainers and faq-maintainers-announce list administrators:lcb@mit.edu (Leo Breebaart) probreak@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (James Michael Chacon) pshuang@mit.edu (Ping Huang) jik@security.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens) ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) buglady@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Aliza R. Panitz) pschleck@unomaha.edu (Paul W. Schleck)
[end reference inclusion]
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