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 the lists themselves 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). Do NOT send email to the list itself asking to
be unsubscribed. If you have problems with the list server software,
email faq-maintainers-request@mit.edu for help.
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) or other kinds of periodic informational
postings. However, subscribers are not required to maintain FAQs;
i.e., 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.
******** 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; in addition, anything approved for it will by default be
sent to the faq-maintainers list as well. 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 except for a periodic copy of this
document).
**** Archives
All messages sent to the list after December 31, 1993 are publicly
available, since recent changes in our handling of the lists have made
it possible for us to offer a public archive. You can access the
archives in rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/faq-maintainers via anonymous FTP. See
the README file for details on archive format.
******** 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", "help",
amongst 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.
List owners: news-answers-request@mit.edu
For help with mailing list software: faq-maintainers-operators@consensus.com
Please do not send email to this address unless you are having problems
with the mailing list software.
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.
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 implicitly 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 and faq-maintainers-announce list administrators:pshuang@mit.edu (Ping Huang) jik@cam.ov.com (Jonathan I. Kamens) [Emeritus] ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig) nancym@mit.edu (Nancy McGough) buglady@bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Aliza R. Panitz) pgreene@optics.rochester.edu (Pamela Greene) schulman+@pitt.edu (Christina Schulman) tittle@mit.edu (Cindy Tittle Moore) emhavens@mit.edu (Emily Havens) foley@mit.edu (Joe Foley) justom@mit.edu (Tom Giordano) joanna@mit.edu (Joanna Yun)