tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 03 00:49:19 1993
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Administrivia: New List Administration Software
- From: Elias Israel <[email protected]>
- Subject: Administrivia: New List Administration Software
- Date: Fri, 02 Jul 93 15:32:47 EDT
tlhInganpu' --
For about a week now, I have been experimenting with some custom list
administration software that I developed for the list. Now that I've
had some time to shake some bugs out of it, I'm announcing its existence
and putting it into general use. From now on, the basic list
administration functions will be handled by this software and there
will also be an alternative mechanism that allows people to get messages
through to me for things that the software can't handle.
Included below is the help file for the new software which describes
the available commands and lists some functions that may be supported
in the future. Please keep in mind that this is custom software that
I wrote myself. Therefore, please do not expect this software to
understand or conform to the commands and/or practices of other popular
list administration software packages (e.g. listserv).
As always, I am happy to hear suggestions for improving the list. Please
send your suggestions to <[email protected]>
and use the keyword "attention" in your subject line.
Elias Israel
List Administator
[email protected]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message contains the help file for the tlhIngan-Hol mailing list.
INTRODUCTION
Administration of the tlhIngan-Hol mailing list is semi-automated. Some
of the common operations can be handled directly by the list software,
without the need of (possibly fallible) human intervention. For operations
that require the attention of a human being, an alternative mechanism is
provided.
COMMAND SUMMARIES
The sections below describe the commands that you can use to interact
with the list management software. Each command is triggered by using a
particular keyword IN THE SUBJECT LINE of your message. Case is not
significant; thus "subscribe" and "SuBsCrIbE" are equivalent. Embedding
these keywords in the body of your message will not work -- they will be
ignored.
Keyword Summary
------------------------------------------------------------------
subscribe Subscribe to the list. The list management software
adds the address in the From line of your message
to the list address database and sends you a welcome
message and the latest copy of the Frequently Asked
Questions list (FAQ).
unsubscribe Remove yourself from the list. The list management
software looks for an address matching the one on
your message's From line in the list address
database and removes it. Then it sends you
confirmation.
help Receive help message. The list management software
sends you a copy of this message.
faq Receive the FAQ. The list management software sends
you a copy of the latest version of the Frequently
Asked Questions list.
attention Get a human's attention. The list management software
forwards messages with this keyword on to a human
operator. If you have a more complicated request, or
if you are having trouble with one of the other
keywords, try this one.
FUTURES
At this time, there is no support for digests or archives, but these may be
added in the future. In addition, there is no direct way to handle a
change of address. One method that you can use directly is to send a
"subscribe" request from your new account, and then an "unsubscribe"
request from the old one. Or, if you prefer not to get the helpfile
and FAQ that are always sent when you use the "subscribe" command, you can
send a message with the "attention" keyword to get a human to make the
change to the subscriber database directly. This method make take a bit
longer, depending on how busy the List Administrator is at the time.
Another feature that may be added in the future is the ability to
suspend mail from tlhIngan-Hol without unsubscribing and to reenable
it at a later time.