[Last updated on: Thu Mar 19 0:09:20 1998] WELCOME TO HARBINGER WARNING: Save this message. It answers many questions you may have later. Sure, you can delete it and ask later, but you will be asking the person who spent a couple of hours writing this message, and wrote it so that you wouldn't have to bother him later. So you can imagine how happy he will be to get your question. ;) I know this message is kind of long. However,I have been running mail lists for years, have run a _bunch_ of lists, and have a good deal experience as to what problems people have with lists and what difficulties they run into. So give this message a read. After you're done reading it, please post a message to the list saying hello and introducing yourself. New subscribers are always welcome and we'd like to hear from you. HOW TO POST TO THE LIST: To post to the list, send you message to: harbinger@smoe.org The posting address is the same no matter which list you joined. Harbinger subscribers send posts to harbinger@smoe.org. Harbinger-digest subscribers send posts to harbinger@smoe.org. Harbinger-news subscriber send their posts to harbinger@smoe.org. LISTS AVAILABLE: Harbinger is actually made up of three co-existing lists. They are: 1) harbinger 2) harbinger-digest 3) harbinger-news What are the differences between the lists? Harbinger is an unmoderated discussion list concerning Paula Cole, issue brought up in Paula's music, and basically anything else music-related that's within reason that subscribers to the list wish to discuss. In other words, there will be Paula Cole news, discussion about Paula Cole, her music, lyrics, etc., and possibly a considerable amount of posts that do not involve Paula Cole or are only tangentially related to Paula Cole but involve issues explored in Paula's music or involve other acts and artists related to Paula or that a number of list members appreciate. (Examples: Sarah McLachlan, Tara McLean, sometimes Tori or Happy Rhodes, most of the other Lillith Fair acts, and many of the newer singer/songwriters popping up each week.) Harbinger is a loose-mail list, which means that when someone sends a message into the list address that message is automatically distributed to all members of the list, usually within a few minutes of its having been received. For a while Harbinger flirted with being a more FTE-like no topic list, but people pretty much stuck with the above and on the occasions when the list got more FTE-like it pissed me off. So that experiment is over. (For those in the not know, FTE is the Sarah McLachlan list, where 100 posts may appear in a day, with 20 being music-related and of those twenty maybe five will be Sarah related). Mainly, Paula has caught on and there are many subscribers, and I don't want people unsubbing from the list because there are bunches of posts a day about utterly off-topic subjects. But I don't put limits on music posts (except please send elsewhere your complaints about Hanson, Spice Girls, etc.) Harbinger-digest is the digest version of harbinger. What this means is that if you subscribe to the digest, you will receive a daily compendium of the day's posts to harbinger. In other words, instead of receiving each message as it is posted to the list, the program running the list gloms all the day's message into one file which is forwarded to you around midnight each night. The subject matter is the same as for harbinger. In fact, harbinger-digest is just a day's worth of harbinger posts packed into one message and forwarded to you. Harbinger-news is a moderated, closed to posting, news-only list. What this means is that no one posts to harbinger-news except for me and one other volunteer. The way the news list works is that as I (and the other volunteer) read through posts that have been sent to harbinger, we will forward to harbinger-news only those posts that announce new Paula Cole cd/video releases, announce concert information, or announce tv and radio appearance by Paula. We will not forward posts that are just discussion about Paula or any of the non- Paula list content. So, if you are the "I'm busy, don't want to read a bunch of crap, just want to know when Paula's going to on Letterman or playing in my home town" type person, the news list is for you. You as a subscriber cannot post to harbinger-news. If you have a piece of news you wish forwarded to the list, mail it to harbinger@smoe.org, not the harbinger-news. LIST TOPIC Paula, her live appearances, magazine articles, etc. The issues brought up in her songs. Related/similar artists. Etc. Jason's all-purpose disclaimer: I run several lists. As such, I can't actually spend that much time with each of them. So there won't be much cheerleading or prodding on my part. The list is managed day-to-day by the list members. Topics of conversation and the like generally are governed by the people that write in, not the list owner. The exception is when I think something has gotten out of hand, in which case I'll ask people to cut it out for sanity's sake. That's happened a couple of times: people were fighting back and forth about what they thought Paula's sexual preference was, she's never felt the need to announce anything, so it was just people pulling things out of their ass and yelling at each other. So I said no more posts about her orientation. I didn't say no posts in general about sexual orientation, just no more uninformed guesswork back and forth about one particular person. A second time was when a couple of the musical cliquists were complaining about "bandwagon" fans that only like people when they get popular. This was happening just when Paula's songs started getting airplay and when the 99% of the US population that hadn't heard her before suddenly had the opportunity to do so. Needless to say, complaints about new, trendy fans are just about the last thing someone wants to hear when they have just found out about an artist and trying to find out more about that artist. So I asked that that particular line of discussion end. New subscribers don't have to worry about the nasty folks, however, as most of them hauled ass out of here after being shouted down. They were last seen at various Towers around the country hiding Shawn Colvin cds so that nobody could buy them and make her popular. Odd people. Oh well, what was that old Peter Gabriel line..."How can you be in when there is no outside?" Some common sense stuff on what *not* to post: o Don't send a message to the list that is intended for only one person- send it to that person. Examples of this are arranging the details of a tape trade, saying hello to just one person, etc. o Don't send binaries or other long files over the list. Why? Well, doing so violates smoe.org's terms of service and can result in the list being discontinued. Lists aren't set up to handle transmitting pictures, sound files, programs, etc. to several hundred of your closest friends. o Administrative messages go to the majordomo@smoe.org address rather than the list address. DO NOT send unsubscribe requests or other such administrative messages to the list address. Doing so can cause the listowner to become annoyed and respond with messages that cause him to send himself a message that he should stop flaming people. o You had a really good cheeseburger today. Your prom dress turned out to be a lousy color. Your friend is publishing a neato comic book. Etc. Stuff that's important, valid, of concern to you, but not quite what I want being sent to 350 of your closest friends on harbinger. ;) About subscriber's relations with one another, I ask that people avoid flaming *each other*. What this means is that if you disagree with what someone has posted, feel free to post that you disagree, but do so in at least a moderately polite tone. "You are so full of shit" is not a moderately polite tone. If someone is really pissing you off, tell them so *in private mail* not in mail to the list. If you feel like someone is picking on you, write me and I will talk to them. On the other hand, I reserve the right to be an asshole. Along those lines, please avoid the temptation to pile on. What I'm talking about is when someone posts something clueless or otherwise objectionable, someone objects in a nasty manner, someone else defends the original person, someone else goes after the person that is defending the other person, and soon people are going after each other and don't remember what the initial problem was. If something's really a problem for you *write me, not the list*. If you are unhappy with a particular topic of conversation *write me, not the list*. If you want people to stop posting but such-and-such *write me, not the list*. Btw, every once and a while I post something and someone replies with a line or two taken out of this message like "Aha! Caught you!" Resist the urge. This isn't a constitutional republic. It's a benign dictatorship. ;) This particular philosopher-king can at times get testy. Don't worry about it. Finally, the little list mini-FAQ: 1) Paula doesn't shave her pits. Cope with it. 2) Paula has a nose ring/stud. Cope with it. 3) Paula is getting popular. Cope with it. 4) More people are at Paula's concerts. Cope with it. 5) The ending of Tiger is the beginning looped backwards. 6) For a few days Warner Bros. had lyrics to This Fire on their web site. The only problem was that they weren't authorized to do so, Paula hadn't wanted lyrics published, and the lyrics published were wrong in places. A few days after they were put up, they disappeared, probably b/c Paula and her manager found out from the list that they were there. Anyway, if you simply must have them, write Riphug@aol.com to ask for them. LIST ADMININISTRATION: GENERAL: All list administration matters go to majordomo@smoe.org, *not* to any of the list addresses. Requests to subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. sent to the list addresses will be *ignored*. So don't even bother. Okay, here are the instructions on: SUBSCRIBING UNSUBSCRIBING PROBLEMS WITH UNSUBSCRIBING SWITCHING FROM ONE LIST TO ANOTHER SUBSCRIBING To subscribe to a list, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: subscribe Where is one of either harbinger, harbinger-digest, or harbinger-news. [Also, don't put the damned <>'s in your message to majordomo. The brackets are there to show that you are supposed to *substitute* the name of the list you wish to join. Don't put the subscribe message in the Subject: line of your message. Just leave the subject line blank. The subscribe message goes in the text part of your email.] UNSUBSCRIBING To unsubscribe, mail majordomo@smoe.org with the message: unsubscribe Where is the name of the list you are attempting to unsubscribe from. Details are the same as for subscribing: Don't put the damned <>'s in your message to majordomo. The brackets are there to show that you are supposed to *substitute* the name of the list you wish to leave. Don't put the unsubscribe message in the Subject: line of your message. Just leave the subject line blank. The subscribe message goes in the text part of your email. PROBLEMS UNSUBSCRIBING I've been told this isn't nice to say, but I will say it anyway: If you are having problems unsubscribing, most likely you are screwing something up. The only time you can say "it's the machine's fault" is when you attempt to unsubscribe and receive back a message saying you are not subscribed to list. We'll get into what that means later on. On the other hand, if the error you get back is "list does not exist on the host", "syntax error", "unrecognized command", "unrecognized listname", "this request must be approved by the list maintainer", etc., the program didn't mess up--you did. (Also, ignore the part about "this request must be approved by the list maintainer." What that means is that majordomo recognized that you were trying to tell it to do something, but couldn't figure out exactly what it was that you wanted. So rather than tell you that, it instead bounces your request to me. I run 14 lists. I'm an attorney. I leave for work at 7:45am and often get home at 9pm. How quickly do you think I am going to get around to trying to figure out what it was you were trying to do? Hint--when one of the Gore daughters is President. Here are the most common unsubscribe mistakes: 1) majordomo is just a collection of programs. Majordomo is not a person. When you are sending a command to majordomo what you are doing is sending in a very small program for majordomo to process. You cannot run Microsoft Excel, type in "Hi Excel, please tell me the sum of 100 and 200" and expect Excel to print "300" on your screen. Similarly, you cannot tell majordomo "Hi, please unsubscribe me from harbinger" and expect it to know what the heck you are trying to do. Majordomo is looking for very simple and very specific instructions. Don't confuse the program by getting fancy. 2) Majordomo is just a collection of programs. It cannot correct spelling. If you mail in the command "unsubsribe harbinger" or "unsubscribe harbiger," majordomo will not have a clue what you want. 3) Majordomo does not understand punctuation. "Unsubscribe harbinger" and "Unsubscribe harbinger." are too completely different messages. Majordomo does not understand periods, commas, exclamation points, etc. So please do not use them when conversing with majordomo. 4) The word "fuck" does not motivate majordomo to assist you. "Unsubscribe me from this fucking list" is not a recognized majordomo command. "Get me off this fucking list" also is not recognized. 5) You need to know what list you are trying to unsub from. Sending "unsubscribe harbinger" messages to majordomo will not help a great deal when you are subscribed to harbinger-news. Now here is where the problem really is with the software, not with you: For unsubscribe messages, majordomo is set to match your address with an address in the subscriber file. If your address doesn't match any of the addresses in the subscriber file, it will not unsub you. This is to protect people from unsubbing you without your permission--an address can only be unsubbed with a message comming from that address. Practical effects: a. If you switch from one system to another, you will have to unsub the old address FROM THE OLD ACCOUNT and sub the new account FROM THE NEW ACCOUNT. Billybob@linedance.redneck.com cannot subscribe billybob@barbque.com to the list, and billybob@rebel.com can't unsubscribe billybob@goddam.lincoln.com from the list. If you can't get into the old account, write jgreshes@netaxs.com with the account name you subbed as and I will manually unsub it. b. If your account name changes since you subscribed, you will have serious problems unsubbing. Say you joined as billybob@truckpull.com and later your account name changed to bb@truckpull.com. Your system is set to deliver mail addressed to billybob to bb, so you keep getting posts from the list, but majordomo can't match bb@truckpull.com to billybob@truckpull.com and therefore can't unsub you. Again, really the only thing you can do is write to jgreshes@netaxs.com with so I can manually unsub you. c. The same thing applies to system names. Say billybob subscribes as billybob@truckpull.com, but his system adminstrators do some mucking around and now his mail reads as being from billybob@monster.truckpull.com. Since the two systems don't match, you have the same problem as above. Once again, write jgreshes@netaxs.com to have you unsubbed. If you have trouble unsubscribing, one thing to not do is write to the list to unsubscribe you. Problem one: majordomo is set to not forward to the list a message that has the word "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" or "help" in the first five lines. So if you spell unsubscribe correctly, your message won't be sent to the list, and no one will ever see it--not much help there. Your message will, however, go through if you somehow misspell "unsubscribe"--in which case someone can look illiterate in front of a couple hundred people. Your manual unsub request will go much quicker if you tell me what the address _is_ that you want unsubbed. If you don't, I have to request a copy of the subscriber list from majordomo, look through the list, hope I pick out the right address, and then unsub it. Since this isn't a paying job, it takes a while before I'll get around to doing all that, so you might as well save me the trouble and get unsubbed a little earlier. If you just don't know what your account was when you subbed, then mail me and eventually you'll get unsubbed. These changed accountid/systemid unsubscribes are a problem, and are annoying for the subscriber, but, well, *they aren't my problem*. I didn't change your userid, I didn't change your system, and although I am more than happy to fix the problem for you, there may be a delay in my doing so. So sending me "You asshole, I asked you this morning to get me off this goddamned list!!!" messages will not help you. SWITCHING FROM ONE LIST TO ANOTHER Although harbinger, harbinger-digest, and harbinger-news are all related, they are three separate lists. Switching from one to another doesn't involve sending a command like "set harbinger digest." Instead, to switch from one list to another what you have to do is unsub from the list you are currently subbed to and then subscribe to the list you want to switch to. Example: You are receiving harbinger, the traffic is too much, and you want to switch to the digest. You would mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe harbinger subscribe harbinger-digest Another example: You switched to digest and there's just too much to go through in the digests. You want to switch to just getting Paula news. You would mail majordomo@smoe.org with: unsubscribe harbinger-digest subscribe harbinger-news Please note that if you sub to a second list without unsubbing from Okay, with that crap out of the way, please enjoy the list! I know this seemed like a lot of detail, and like I'm going to be giving a pop quiz, but it really is just a simple message that got longer and longer as particular situtations came up. All parts of this message aren't directed at all subscribers. It's just that anything that comes up for you while you are subbed to the list is probably covered in here somewhere. Glad to have you on the list. jason greshes jgreshes@netaxs.com