Please be sure to remember to UNSUBSCRIBE yourself from the list after the course is completed!
The LISTSERV software being used for the Entropy discussion list ignores the content of the E-mail message's Subject header. You may choose to use a subject, but what you type will have no influence on the outcome of sending the message. For messages that are being sent for re-broadcast to the participants, it is nice to use a reasonably terse descriptive subject. For messages that are LISTSERV commands, it is a good habit to use the basic command verb (e.g., "unsubscribe") as the subject.
listserv@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
The message contents ("body") of all command messages, including the subscribe command message, must be plain text, not HTML, because the command interpreter will be confused by any HTML tags. (If you are using "Hotmail," beware, because "HTML-only" messages are Hotmail's default. I believe that when you start composing the message, there is a tools menu, one of whose choices will let you turn off the "rich text editor," and that will result in a plain text message, which should work.) Your message should consist of the following two lines:
subscribe t3415arp
END
The indentation shown above is for clarity in presentation here, do not indent those lines in your message.
If you get an error message when you attempt to subscribe to the list, read it carefully for clues as to the nature of the problem. If you continue to get error messages, please forward one to piccard@ohio.edu, so that I can take a look at it to help you get subscribed.
If your E-mail system does not automatically append a "signature" to your messages, then you could leave off the second line in the contents of your message, so that it is just
subscribe t3415arp
The function of the "END" is to prevent the LISTSERV software from becoming confused by trying to interpret your signature as commands.
After you get back the welcome message, and therefore know that you are subscribed to the list, you should check to see if there were any messages that went out to the list before you subscribed. They are in the list's archive, which you can get by sending an E-mail to the command address, listserv@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu, with two lines:
directory [t3415arp]end
The response will be an E-mail listing the archives. Initially, there is only one, but as the quarter goes on, the older messages will be placed into a different archive file. Based on the archive listing that you receive, you will send another message to the command address, with two lines (the part between the "]" and the ";1" -- here "archive.txt" -- will depend on the listing you have received):
send [t3415arp]archive.txt;1end
The response will be an E-mail containing the accumulated messages, some of which may have been sent after you subscribed, but certainly including all the ones that you missed.
t3415arp@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Remember that you should choose and type in a subject that is descriptive but not too wordy.
Remember that with many E-mail systems, a Reply to a list message will be going back to the list address, and therefore will be re-broadcast to everyone on the list, not just to the author of the message that you are responding to. In other situations, such a Reply will go only to the original sender of the message. Be careful to choose the method that will create the result you want. The instructor can only give you credit for participation if the message goes to the list!
HELP - to get a help fileUNSUBSCRIBE t3415arp - to remove yourself from the listSEND/LIST t3415arp - to get a list of current subscribersDIRECTORY [t3415arp] - to get a listing of all archivesSEND [t3415arp]archive.txt - to get the current month's archivesLIST - to get a list of other listsEND - to ignore all further lines (signature)
The file "[t3415arp]archive.txt" is the archive of the current month's activities. The "DIRECTORY" command will evoke a message that lists all available archives. The naming convention for previous months' archives should be obvious on inspection of the directory listing.
Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/listserv.html) on December 22, 2005.
Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "piccard@ohio.edu".