[Keskydee] ADMIN: Important info about the afscv-* lists

[Marc MERLIN]

[See the bottom for instructions on how to unsubscribe if that's what you're
trying to do]

First of  all, apologies  this took  so long,  Denis asked  me to  leave the
Alliance Francaise's lists alone for a couple of months after Ludo left with
a copy of the list membership, in order to have a "clean break", but he has,
just like me, been too busy with work to take over the lists since then.
(Denis, for  the few of you  who might not  know him is a  representative of
l'Alliance  Francaise,  while Ludo  is  a  francophone non  associated  with
l'Alliance Francaise  and he maintains a  private mailing list of  events in
the bay area)

This might be  a bit confusing for some  of you, so let me give  you a brief
history, which will hopefully clear up confusions.

- Ludo initially had his list of events that he maintained by hand, and he
  was having problems because his computer wasn't powerful enough to handle
  all the people he was emailing
- I  offered to  setup a  couple  of mailing  lists  on one  of my  machines
  connected to the internet so that he could simply broadcast his messages.
- The list was called afscv-announce, with Denis' blessing
- I created an afscv-talk list too since  I believed it'd be nice to have an
  unmoderated  list people  could converse  on, but  unfortunately Ludo  has
  always been against that list, for no real good reason, so he continued to
  subscribe people to the afscv-announce list by default and the afscv-talk
  list never really took off
- After  I  started  noticing  that Ludo  would  occasionally  send  private
  announcements for some select friends ("I have puppies to sell/give away",
  "I  have job  offers,  come work  for  my  company", "I  have  a house  to
  sell/apartment for  rent/I need a  roomate"), some of which  had obvoiusly
  nothing to  do with French  events, I  created at 3rd  list at the  time I
  switched mailing list software: afscv-events. So we then had:
  - afscv-events: only event announcements
  - afscv-announce: afscv-events + some non event related announcements
  - afscv-talk: all of the above, plus unmoderated (i.e. open to posting by
    all)
  The idea was to give people the  choice of what they wanted to receive and
  not force  them to receive  everything if they  only wanted to  know about
  events.
- Ludo disagreed with that list splitup  and chose to ignore the distinction
  between events and  announce, forcing me to redirect his  mails by hand to
  the appropriate list
- Ludo eventually  stopped posting to  the lists,  and made direct  posts to
  people, after having stolen the list membership.
  While the  word "stolen" may  be harsh, I use  it on purpose,  because the
  list membership is private, and it's for no one to have, including myself.
  Many people do  not mind either way,  but some subscribed to  the list not
  through ludo,  but through the web,  and some were very  unhappy when they
  started getting direct  Emails from Ludo (who some did  not even know) and
  asked  me how  he had  gotten their  Emails when  the list  membership was
  supposed to be private.
  As listmaster, I feel responsible for members' privacy, and I was put in a
  very unconfortable  situation when Ludo  left with a  copy of most  of the
  list membership, which I was expected to keep private.
  While this is kind  of old news now (Jan 2000), I  still want to apologize
  to you all for  this, and we will do our best so  that this doesn't happen
  again  (random people  can't  review  the list  membership,  but the  list
  moderator can)


That's  it  for  history. Now  a  few  points to  make  sure  there  are  no
misunderstandings:
- The list splits weren't  done just because I had too much  time on my hand
  (believe me, I sure don't), but  because, as listmaster, I received Emails
  from several  people who  complained and/or suggested  the differentiation
  between the 3 lists.
  I also couldn't help but noticing people unsubscribing almost every time a
  job offer  or some  non event related  post was forwarded  to the  list by
  Ludo.
- I  do  not   represent  l'Alliance  Francaise,  I'm   merely  someone  who
  volunteered his time and computer resources to help out.
- I  have no desire or  reason to "compete"  with Ludo and his  list. I have
  more than enough to do as it is, trust me :-)
  If these lists end up dying because no one offers to become moderator, or
  everyone unsubscribes, so be it.


What now?
Well, while this was  delayed a bit due to both Denis and  I being a bit too
busy  with our  day jobs,  the idea  was to  have someone  be moderator  for
afscv-events@lists.merlins.org and afscv-announce@lists.merlins.org
If you are willing to help out with that job, please Email
afscv-events-admin@lists.merlins.org. Denis will decide who gets the job if
we have several volunteers.
Basically, you'd be responsible for  screening event announcements that come
from Ludo or other lists and annoucements forwarded by people. You'd also and post the relevant ones to the events
list.
Likewise,  you would  screen  the announcements  sent to  you  and post  the
appropriate ones to the announce list.


This means that if  you also receive Emails directly from  Ludo (most of you
probably do since he  took the list membership with him),  you get to decide
if you  want to  get a few  duplicates or if  you want  to ask Ludo  to stop
Emailing you or to unsubscribe from this list.

This gets us to: "how does one unsubscribe?"
You may have subscribed yourself or Ludo may have subscribed you. Please do
not blame me as I did not personally subscribe anyone.
Here are the instructions to remove yourself from the list you're on:

- You do not reply to this message and say "remove me"
- You do not act as a jerk and post multiple "remove me" messages to the
  list itself, and annoy the whole list membership in the process
- You find out which list you're subscribed to (see the bottom of this
  Email, the last 3 lines tell you)
- You go to the URL that's provided, for instance
  http://lists.merlins.org/lists/listinfo/afscv-talk
- Since you probably do not know your list password, you go to the bottom of
  the page, enter your Email in the last box and click on "edit options".
  If that fails, try other addresses you might be subscribed under
- Click on the "Email My Password To Me" box
- Wait for the Email with your password
- Go back to the same page, provide the password and click "Unsubscribe"

If and only if you cannot find out which Email Address, you're subscribed under
you can forward a post from the list with full headers to
"listname"-admin@lists.merlins.org (i.e. afscv-talk-admin@lists.merlins.org)
and ask for help.

I'm sorry but I administrate many lists with thousands of subscribers, and I
definitely  do not  have  time  to manually  unsubscribe  everyone who  asks
instead of asking the list software to be unsubscribed.
Please  follow the  directions  and only  ask  the list  admin  for help  if
everything else failed.


Note that most of you ended up on the afscv-talk list when the list software
was switched. If you  do not want to receive other  people's posts, you have
the option to unsubscribe from the  talk list (as shown above) and subscribe
to the events  _or_ the announce list (announce receives  events, so no need
to be on both). 
See here for the lists information and subscription forms:
http://marc.merlins.org/mailinglists/afscv.html

Also, I temporarily switched the afscv-talk list to moderated status because
of  the few  people who  spammed  the list  with unsubscription  requests. 
I  will manually  approve  legitimate posts  for a  little  while until  the
unsubscription  business  dies  down,  and  I'll switch  the  list  back  to
unmoderated status after that.
At that time,  you all get to  "moderate" the list by  Emailing (in private)
people who misuse the list and complaining to them.
Note that  the list will now  only forward your  posts if you post  from the
same  Email address  than the  address you're  subscribed under. This  is to
prevent  further occurences  of spam  messages,  like the  one message  that
unfortunately slipped through a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you for your attention.
Marc
-- 
Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
 
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/ (friendly to non IE browsers)
Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key and other contact information