Strathspey Mailing List Information

General

The Strathspey mailing list is a forum for the discussion of all aspects of Scottish country dancing, e.g., dance descriptions, dancing technique, the history of dances and dancing, learning or teaching how to dance, dance music, … We also welcome descriptions of new dances, announcements of events like courses or balls, or anything related to Scottish country dancing that the subscribers might find interesting.

Please follow these ground rules when participating in Strathspey:

• Please do not post unrelated material such as unsolicited non-SCD advertisements to this list. Announcements of new SCD-related products, such as dance books, dance CDs, and so on are generally OK – if in doubt, ask the list manager for advice.
• Please keep your submissions reasonably courteous. Imagine you are sitting on a discussion panel in front of 500 people (which is essentially true) and pick your language accordingly. Remember that you might meet your opposite on the dance floor one day. Also remember that anything posted to the list is archived for public access, so your mom, spouse, boss, future boss, … might come across it eventually.
• Please do not post descriptions of dances without the deviser’s explicit consent.
• Please do not post messages in HTML or other non-text formats. HTML and other non-text content will be removed from messages before they are distributed. This prevents your computer (and others) from catching the latest HTML-based “virus”.
• The list refuses to distribute messages that are larger than 32.000 bytes or so. (32K in plain text is a lot of stuff – about 16 tightly typewritten pages –, so this shouldn’t really cramp your style.)
• If you have material that you want to share, but which is very large or in a non-text format, put it on the Web and post the URL (web address) to Strathspey. If you don’t know how to put material on the Web, ask the list manager for advice. We will be happy to provide space for SCD-related items if you do not have a Web site of your own.

Gross violations of the first three rules may result in posting privileges being withdrawn at the discretion of the list maintainer(s). [So far this has happened twice in over twenty years and nearly 70.000 messages of Strathspey, so rest assured that on the whole the community has a fairly thick hide – but enough is enough. See here for further explanations.] The other rules are enforced automatically by the list software.

List operation

You can subscribe to the list by sending a message (any message) to

strathspey+subscribe@strathspey.org

You will receive an automated message from the list management software asking you to ”confirm” your subscription request according to the instructions contained in that message. This makes sure that (a) you can receive mail from Strathspey at your mail address and (b) you really want to subscribe to Strathspey. (Some people consider it a funny little prank to subscribe somebody to 10,000 different mailing lists.)

If you are tired of reading Strathspey or do not want your mailbox to overflow while you are away on holiday for four weeks, you can unsubscribe from the list using the address

strathspey+unsubscribe@strathspey.org

Unsubscription requests do not require confirmation (so far).

The Strathspey list is also available as a “digest”, which is one big message per day (or so) containing everything posted since the last digest. This is convenient if you do not want your mailbox cluttered with a dozen Strathspey messages everytime you check for mail, but makes it a little less convenient to answer to individual messages (but your mail program may help you with that).

Postings to be distributed to all subscribers must be sent to

strathspey@strathspey.org

The mailing list is unmoderated, i.e., everything that is submitted is forwarded directly to the subscribers of the list. You need to be a subscriber to be able to post, meaning that, for every incoming submission the list management software checks whether the “From:” address on that message is contained in the subscriber database. If this is not the case, the message will be sent to the list manager (or some other designated “moderator”) for approval. The list manager will approve messages for distribution if they adhere to the general rules listed above. In particular, unsolicited non-SCD advertising will not be approved. The main reason for all this hassle is to keep the list as “spam-free” as possible.

If you have several e-mail addresses that you want to submit postings to Strathspey from, but only want to receive Strathspey mail at one of them, you can subscribe all the others but set them to “nomail”. Such addresses will be allowed to post but will not receive messages.

An archive of past postings and other material is available via the World-Wide Web; use the URL

http://www.strathspey.org/lists/strathspey@strathspey.org/

Disclaymore

The Strathspey List, the Strathspey Server, and its maintainer(s) are in no way officially connected with (other than through individual membership) or endorsed by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. If you do encounter important RSCDS people on the list – which may happen occasionally –, you should always assume that they participate in any discussion as “private citizens” unless they explicitly say otherwise.