Green Bottom Forest of Dean
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Green Bottom Forest of Dean mailing list

Answers to questions you may ask

• I have several email addresses
• How do I change my email address.
• Will I get spam?
• Can my computer catch a virus from the list?
• Why can I not post normally?
• Are there any list rules

How do I change my email address

Unsubscribe from the old address and subscribe from the new.

I have several email addresses

If you have several email addresses, you can subscribe as many as you wish to the list. But you probably only want one copy of each posting,

Subscribe the main email address normally. Subscribe the others, from which you may wish to post, as 'nomail'. Copies will not then be sent to these! You can use this link: chat+subscribe-nomail@greenbotton.org

The nomail subscription process is the same as the standard subscription process, but be extra careful at step 3 as there is an extra -nomail bit so the confirm address should look something like

chat+confsub-nomail-124fe5534995602d-youremail=yourdomain.com@greenbottom.org

Will I get spam?

No. Spammers will not jump through the hoops necessary to subscribe: that is what the process is for! If the list's address ever does get on any spammer's list, it gets referred to the list master for moderation as the spammer has not joined the list. As web master and list master I have a very strict policy on spam so I handle generally fewer than 10 spams per day: every single one of these gets reported as spam to Spamcop.net who keep black lists for good providers to use to stop spam.

Can my computer catch a virus from the list?

No. Malware in general is distributed by email as attachments. The Chat list does not allow any attachments, so it cannot carry viruses or other malware.

In fact malware does get on occasion get onto list members computers (via other sources) and this does result in the list address getting onto spammers lists: I as listmaster sometimes see the result when spam emails which are referred to me for moderation. The list members do not see them.

Why can I not post normally?

The list is set to accept only plain text: Microsoft email programs are set by default to send emails as html: this is sent as an attachment.

When the internet was young, and MicroSoft could not pretend to own it, and agreed standards evolved for email. MicroSoft trod roughshod over these standards and started using html. They also set their email programs so that the standard QUILA (Quote and In-Line Reply) system did not work properly. Standards disintegrated and email nowadays is not as it was: as a result email lists such as this chatlist declined and www forums grew as they did not rely on broken email programs.

So really, the only way a mailing list such as this can work well is by using the old standards of plain text only and QUILA. The links are to my own site explaining how it should all work. Therefore this list is set to only accept plain text emails. Anything else will be returned to sender.

As a matter of interest, the original email netiquette is still fairly rigorously applied on most News Groups (Usenet) postings. If you do not know about News Groups see

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