The WAGGGS-L Help File

This file contains information you will need to use to manage your WAGGGS-L mail. Please print this file, and/or save it in a location where you'll be able to find it again. Even if you don't foresee any use for it right now, you will need it eventually. This file will help you understand the mail you may get from listserv, it directs you in finding old postings, and tells you how to get help when you need it.

    It covers the following topics:
  1. List Addresses
  2. Subscribing
  3. Starting and Stopping Your Mail
  4. Receiving WAGGGS-L mail in digest or individual form
  5. What to do if your list mail suddenly stops
  6. Error messages from listserv
  7. Looking for old postings
  8. Looking for people
  9. List Etiquette
  10. Getting More Help and Information

    1. LIST ADDRESSES

    • To send a message to WAGGGS-L, send to
      WAGGGS-L@iupui.edu
    • To contact the listowners, send to
      owner-WAGGGS-L@iupui.edu
    • To make changes in your WAGGGS-L subscription, or to locate information from old postings, or to find someone's address, etc. send to
      listserv@iupui.edu
    where a machine rather than a person will handle your request. Because a machine is processing your request, it's crucial that you spell all commands correctly.

    All the commands explained below should be sent to listserv@iupui.edu.

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    2. SUBSCRIBING

    To SUBSCRIBE, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    subscribe WAGGGS-L YourFirstName YourLastName

    You will receive a reply from listserv, usually very quickly, with a request to confirm your subscription. If you don't reply to the confirmation, your subscription will not be processed.

    Your subscription request to WAGGGS-L may be unsuccessful if you spell the list name wrong, or if you send the command to the wrong address. Please note that the list's name has 3Gs in it, and has an L at the end.

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    3. STARTING AND STOPPING YOUR MAIL

    to GET OFF THE LIST PERMANENTLY, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    unsubscribe WAGGGS-L OR signoff WAGGGS-L

    to STOP MAIL TEMPORARILY, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L nomail
    Please set the list to nomail if you will be away from your e-mail for any length of time and there is any danger your mailbox will overflow. to REACTIVATE MAIL AFTER YOU'VE TURNED IT OFF TEMPORARILY, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L mail

    When you send this command to listserv after a period of being set to nomail, listserv will restore your subscription to its previous settings. If you were receiving digests, you'll begin getting digests again; if you were receiving the list via individual messages, the individual messages will begin again.

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    4. RECEIVING WAGGGS-L MAIL IN DIGEST OR INDIVIDUAL FORM

    When you first subscribe to WAGGGS-L, you'll begin receiving a daily digest, a mailing that contains all the messages sent to the list in a 24-hour period. Each digest is prefaced with an index that lists the subjects covered in the digest. On some days, you may receive more than one digest, since listserv will release a digest every 500 lines.

    If you prefer, you can receive the list in individual messages, which means that whenever someone sends a message to WAGGGS-L it will be delivered to your address. With this option, you will receive a lot of mail; WAGGGS-L often generates more than 50 messages a day. Some readers prefer this option because it makes it easier to delete messages they are not interested in, although other readers find that this option generates too much mail to manage.

    to RECEIVE THE LIST IN INDIVIDUAL MESSAGES, send
    listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L mail

    to RECEIVE THE LIST IN A DIGEST, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L digest

    TO STOP GETTING A COPY OF YOUR OWN POSTINGS sent back to you by listserv, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L norepro
    If you change your mind, and want to start receiving copies of your own postings again, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    set WAGGGS-L repro
    When you first subscribe, you will be receiving copies of your own postings. You don't need to take any action unless you wish to change that.

    TO RECEIVE AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF YOUR POSTINGS TO THE LIST from listserv, send listserv@iupui.eduthe command
    set WAGGGS-L ack

    If you change your mind, and don't want the acknowledgments anymore, send the command
    set WAGGGS-L noack

    if YOU CAN'T TELL WHO SENT MESSAGES TO THE LIST because your e-mail program only shows you that the posting came from WAGGGS-L, send the command
    set WAGGGS-L DUALHDR

    and information about the sender and subject line will be repeated in the body of each message. If you want to turn this setting off, send listserv@iupui.eduthe command
    set WAGGGS-L FULLHDR
    5. WHAT TO DO IF YOUR MAIL FROM THE LIST STOPS There are two reasons that mail from the list may stop. The list may be locked up, or there may be a problem with your account or subscription. WAGGGS-L will automatically lock up after 60 messages a day have been sent; please see the welcome message for more information on guidelines on list posting. The list owners usually unlock the list after a short period of time, and most readers will notice no interruption in service. However, if the list locks over a weekend, it may be Monday before the problem is fixed.

    The more common reason for list mail to stop is a problem with your account. If your account fills up, your mailbox may reject new messages; if your service providers server crashes, all mail to your site may be rejected. All these situations will generate errors to the owners mailbox, and we will set your account to nomail.

    IF YOUR LIST MAIL SUDDENLY STOPS, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    query WAGGGS-L

    you'll receive information about your subscription. If you are set to nomail, use the information in section 3 to restart your mail. If you are not set to nomail, wait 24 hours or until Monday, and then write to the listowners.

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    6. ERROR MESSAGES YOU MAY GET FROM LISTSERV

    IF YOU TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH LISTSERV AND IT SAYS YOU ARE NOT SUBSCRIBED, your e-mail address has changed from the address which originally subscribed to WAGGGS-L. Sometimes these changes seem transparent to you (you may have moved from being user@mail.somewhere.com to user@somewhere.com, and your system may be forwarding mail from the old address to the new address). You must delete the subscription for the old address and subscribe from the new address. Contact the list owners if you need help with this process.

    to SEE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION SETTINGS, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    query WAGGGS-L

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    7. LOOKING FOR OLD POSTINGS

    TO READ OLD POSTINGS from the list, you need two commands. to get a list of all available files, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    index WAGGGS-L

    and you'll get back a list of files. This is a useful strategy if you're interested in reviewing large batches of old postings from a given week.

    to request a particular file (a weekly archive), send the command
    get WAGGGS-L filename
    (where filename is replaced by, for example, log9608A [the log for the first week of August 1996], or log9608B [the log for the second week of August 1996, etc.]

    to FIND A PARTICULAR POSTING, send the command
    search prominent-keywords-you're-searching-for in WAGGGS-L
    (e.g. search can a woman in WAGGGS-L; you'll get back a list of likely postings, with excerpts, and then you can send the command
    getpost WAGGGS-L XXXX

    (XXXX is replaced with the number assigned the posting in the search results. This is explained in the search results.)

    to RESTRICT YOUR SEARCH IF THE FIRST TRY GENERATED TOO MANY RESPONSES, you need to modify your search request. There are several ways to do so.

    First off, you can try changing your search term, or expanding your term to a phrase that you put in quotation marks. You can also put your search term in quotation marks, which will help restrict the search. Searching for "parents meeting" rather than parents meeting will return fewer posts.

    Secondly, you can tell LISTSERV to look for several words at once, using OR, AND, NEAR, and parentheses like this:
    SEARCH (fuzzy near bear) or (badges and software) in WAGGGS-L

    which would send back to you the numbers of messages which matched either one of two conditions: 1) they had both the words "fuzzy" and "bear", and near each other; or 2) they had both the words "badges" and "software", not necessarily near each other but certainly within the same message.

    You can also restrict by date using SINCE and UNTIL, like this:
    SEARCH parents meeting IN WAGGGS-L SINCE 1 Jul 1997
    SEARCH * IN WAGGGS-L SINCE TODAY-5
    SEARCH tents IN WAGGGS-L UNTIL 1997

    As you can see, date formats are pretty flexible. The second one means "find all messages in WAGGGS-L for the past 5 days." The * is a wildcard character that matches any text, so if you use it in a search request, listserv will respond with all posts that fit the other parameters you've set.

    All these search commands can be combined so long as you keep to a single line in your e-mail message to listserv. For instance, if you missed a particular digest, and you want to retrieve it, you need to use a combination of the SINCE and UNTIL restrictors. To retrieve the messages sent in on March 5, 1998, send the command
    SEARCH * IN WAGGGS-L SINCE 5 MAR 1998 UNTIL 5 MAR 1998

    You can also search in specific fields of a message, such as the sender's e-mail address or subject line. In these fields, you can also tell LISTSERV to match words based on what they sound like rather than exactly how they are spelled, helping you avoid some spelling errors. Examples:
    SEARCH * IN WAGGGS-L SINCE TODAY-30 WHERE SUBJECT SOUNDS LIKE Daisy
    SEARCH * IN WAGGGS-L WHERE SENDER CONTAINS Harrington
    The first example means "Find everything in the past month with a subject line that sounds like Daisy," and the second example means "find everything ever sent to WAGGGS-L by someone with the name Harrington."

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    8. LOOKING FOR PEOPLE

    Try to avoid sending mail to WAGGGS-L that is meant for only one person. If you need help finding someone's e-mail address, use this procedure. to FIND A PARTICULAR PERSON, send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    scan WAGGGS-L name
    where name is replaced with the name of the person you want to find (e.g. scan WAGGGS-L Susan or scan WAGGGS-L Crawley)

    To get a list of all WAGGGS-L subscribers (who have not asked listserv to conceal their addresses), send listserv@iupui.edu the command
    review WAGGGS-L

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    9. LIST ETIQUETTE

    List etiquette is an important topic that is addressed in a separate document, the WAGGGS-L welcome letter, which is automatically mailed to people after the subscription process is over. You can get a copy of the current welcome letter at any time by sending listserv@iupui.edu the command get WAGGGS-L welcome

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    10. GETTING MORE HELP AND INFORMATION

    More information about activities and topics associated with WAGGGS-L is available in the WAGGGS-L 101 file. Send listserv@Iupui.edu the message
    get WAGGGS-L 101

    for a file that contains information about favorite web sites, WAGGGS-L service projects, patches, pins, and other neat information. The file is also available here

    More detailed information about listserv commands is available at http://www.lsoft.com.

    Any problems or questions? contact Susan Harrington or Sara Crawley at
    owner-WAGGGS-L@iupui.edu