FAQ: pynchon-l Frequently Asked Questions
Murthy Yenamandra
yenamand at cs.umn.edu
Fri Aug 22 14:24:45 CDT 1997
This is the monthly informational posting for pynchon-l. Please save
this message for future reference (you will need it!) and direct all
comments about this FAQ to <yenamand at cs.umn.edu>.
If you have questions about the list, your membership status, or the
status of something you've sent to the list, send mail to
<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>. If that doesn't work, try sending mail
directly to the list owners:
Oliver Xymoron <oxymoron at waste.org>
Murthy Yenamandra <yenamand at cs.umn.edu>
List Purpose and Policy:
-----------------------
You are on the pynchon-l mailing list (or its digest version), devoted
to the discussion of the life (if you must) and works (please!) of
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon.
As far as we're concerned, pretty much any Pynchon-related topic is OK
on this list, from Pynchon apocrypha through light discussion of your
favorite passages, to litcrit as heavy as you want. We interpret this
liberally, but that's no reason to conduct extended discussions of
unrelated topics on the list - do use your discretion. This is at
present an open and unmoderated list, meaning that anyone is free to
join, leave or (while a member) post to the list without the prior
approval of the list owners. If you are not hearing enough from the
list, start a discussion.
List Commands:
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Pynchon-l uses the majordomo software which automates most of the
administrative steps. You will get the quickest results if you stick to
the following directions, otherwise your requests will have to wait for
listowner intervention to take effect. All list commands should be
addressed to <waste at waste.org>. For a complete list of commands,
send mail to <waste at waste.org> with the body "help".
If you're not already on pynchon-l, then feel free to join the list by
sending a message to <waste at waste.org> with the line "subscribe pynchon-l"
in the body. To leave the list, send "unsubscribe pynchon-l" instead.
There is also a digest version of the list that bundles the pynchon-l
traffic into a couple of manageable digests a day. By subscribing to the
digest version, you will not miss any content at all, but receive fewer,
longer compilations (instead of receiving each message as it is posted).
If you'd like this digest version, send "subscribe pynchon-l-digest"
to <waste at waste.org>. You must then send "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest"
to leave the digest version.
To send mail to the list, address it to <pynchon-l at waste.org>
(that's pynchon dash ell, not pynchon dash one). There is no need to
send separately to pynchon-l-digest as it will automatically include
everything on the regular list.
Please remember to distinguish between replies to individuals and
replies to the group. In most cases you will want to reply for the
whole group to read, so you have to intentionally reply to the whole
group.
List Caveats:
------------
If your post to pynchon-l takes an unusually long time to show up on the
list, it's possible that it is waiting for the list owner's approval to
go on the list (and it might take a while, especially on weekends,
before it gets processed). Even though pynchon-l is an unmoderated list,
here are a few reasons why a message might need to be approved before
going out to the list:
1. Messages from non-members. This means that the message is sent from
an address that's not recognized as that of a list member. If you have
multiple accounts, you can avoid delays by consistently using the same
address to subscribe and post to pynchon-l. All non-member posts are
checked for relevant and meaningful content (no junk mail etc) before
they are forwarded to the list.
2. Messages exceeding 10K. This generally means pictures and in a few
instances unusually long text messages (such as GRGR or MDMD). A better
way to make pictures available is to put them up on the web and posting
the URL. If you don't have the resources or the space, then any number
of foax on the list should be willing to put them up on their web pages.
3. Messages containing subscribe/unsubscribe requests. This is intended
to catch the commands mistakenly sent to the list address instead of the
list server address, but occasionally misfires when a normal posting
contains keywords in the first few lines.
List Audience:
-------------
We keep the actual list of pynchon-l members confidential in order to
protect the list members' privacy (we will name no names!). But we can
tell you that including you and Thomas Pynchon (we like to think), 426
people from around 20 countries receive pynchon-l. Here is a domain-wise
breakdown of the list audience (as of Aug 22, 1997):
Domain Count %age Domain Description
------ ----- ---- ------------------
com 143 33.6 Commercial
edu 102 23.9 Educational
net 73 17.1 Network
uk 15 3.5 United Kingdom
org 14 3.3 Organizational
de 12 2.8 Germany
ca 10 2.3 Canada
us 7 1.6 United States
jp 6 1.4 Japan
fi 5 1.2 Finland
au 4 0.9 Australia
fr 4 0.9 France
gov 4 0.9 Government
nl 4 0.9 Netherlands
be 3 0.7 Belgium
dk 3 0.7 Denmark
at 2 0.5 Austria
za 2 0.5 South Africa
se 2 0.5 Sweden
ch 2 0.5 Switzerland
gr 1 0.2 Greece
is 1 0.2 Iceland
ie 1 0.2 Ireland
it 1 0.2 Italy
pl 1 0.2 Poland
es 1 0.2 Spain
th 1 0.2 Thailand
ua 1 0.2 Ukraine
?? 1 0.2 Unknown
--------------
Total 426
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pynchon-l Archives:
------------------
If you would like the Pynchon-l archives, just go to the San Narcisco
Community College Thomas Pynchon home page:
http://www.pomona.edu/pynchon/index.html
or Andrew Dinn's searchable archive at
http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~andrew/pynchon-l.html
There is also an FTP archive on W.A.S.T.E.:
ftp://ftp.waste.org/pub/lists/pynchon-l/
And a new searchable archive on W.A.S.T.E.:
http://www.waste.org/pynchon-l/
If you have questions about the list, your membership status, or the
status of something you've sent to the list, send mail to
<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>. If that doesn't work, try sending mail
directly to the list owners.
Your list owners are:
Oliver Xymoron <oxymoron at waste.org>
Murthy Yenamandra <yenamand at cs.umn.edu>
Please contact us if you have any problems.
Enjoy.
--
Murthy Yenamandra mailto:yenamand at cs.umn.edu
Dept of Computer Science University of Minnesota
"Every heart/to love will come/but like a refugee" - Leonard Cohen
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