PLEASE read this message!

[rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)]

If you don't already have the welcome message you received when you
signed on to the dinosaur list, PLEASE read this message in its
entirety and put it in a safe place where you can find it again later.
Otherwise you can delete it after you finish the next paragraph.  

Because of the increased traffic we've been receiving of late, I think
it's become more imperative that people use discretion when writing to
the list.  I'm hoping that a good bit of inappropriate (read
administrative) traffic will be cut off by this message, but there are
other things which can be trimmed as well.  Remember that some people
have to pay for the time and disk space that they use when reading
their mail so you should act accordingly.  For instance, when someone
asks for administrative assistance, you can rest assured that I will
respond to them.  If you would like to help me in such instances
(which I appreciate), you can write to the offender directly and send
a copy to me so that I know I don't have to (though on most days
you're unlikely to beat me to it).  If you think that people need a
reminder because enough time has gone by since the last time that I
sent a message like this one, just tell me and I'll send out something
similar to the message following this paragraph.  Finally, when
responding to a legitimate message from someone else, try to include
as little of the original person's text as possible.  It's not
necessary to include an entire message in order to add one line.
Sorry if this sounds paternal...

Now as a refresher:

There are three addresses to keep in mind in nearly all mailing lists.
One is the address to which administrative requests should be sent.
In this particular case, that address is:

listproc@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu

Any time that you want to change anything about your subscription
(e.g. change your address, temporarily or permanently stop mail
etc. etc.) that is the address to which you should write.  However, in
many cases (such as for this list) the administrative address will
route your mail to a program that administers the list, and since we
haven't yet reached the 23rd century, you have to learn to speak the
program's language.  To start down that path for this system, you can
send a message that the program will resonate with:

help

Send that single word in the body of a message to the administrative
address, and it will send you information that will help you to learn
more about the system and how to interact with it.

The next address to remember is that of the "owner" of the list.  The
owner is the person who has (stupidly :-) volunteered to take care of
things which the program cannot do on its own.  If you have gone
through the "help" file and still cannot figure out how to get the
program to do what you want, you should write to the owner.
Fortunately, most list owners have a broader command of the language
spoken on the list (U.S. English in this case, though some Aussie and
British dialects are acceptable :-) than does the program, so you can
write to that address as though you were actually talking to the
person.  For this list, that person would be me, and the address would
be:

rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu

The last address you need to know is the address of the list itself.
I put it last because you should REALLY think about it before using
this address.  Anything you write to that address will be broadcast to
all other subscribers (unless the program finds your message
"suspicious"), and most of those people are at least as busy as you.
Please try to make sure that you won't be bothering all of these
people before you write to the list address.  In this case, the
address of the list is:

dinosaur@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu

Thanks for your cooperation, and sorry to clutter the list again. 

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)