Help With Lists and Logs

Topics
  1. My post has a lot of funny =80 or <HTML> types of things strewn through it.  What's going on?
  2. Part of my post was cut off.  What happened?
  3. My post has blank lines in the middle of paragraphs.  How do I make it stop doing that?
  4. Some people's messages seem to have paragraphs with lines that are cut short.  Is there a way to fix that?
  5. My messages aren't getting through at all. What do I do?
  6. I need to start a list or log. What are the differences and how do I start and run one?
  1. My post has a lot of funny =80 or <HTML> types of things strewn through it.  What's going on?
     
    Your email program is set to use a non-standard character set or encoding or styling.  Some people who receive your email may complain about this too, while others may not. For maximum compatibility with everyone's email, and the list facility, ensure that you send plain text email messages only.
     
    We can't put instructions for everyone's email program here, but here are some hints. Look in your email program's "settings" (or "preferences", "options", "tools", etc.) for things like "character set" or "encoding" or "styling" and make sure they all look something like "ASCII", "plain text" or "ISO-8859-1", and not "quoted printable", "UTF-8", "rich text", or "html".
     
  2. Part of my post was cut off.  What happened?
     
    The list system automatically excludes any part of a posting after a line that begins with two dashes in a row ("--").  This is actually a privacy feature, so you can prevent the latter part of a message from being Web viewable while still letting email recipients see it.
     
    It's a standard practice, though not always observed, to precede one's sig (signature lines) with a line consisting of only dash-dash-space ("--"). Since people often put their telephone numbers and other personal information in their signature lines, if they follow this two-dashes practice they will prevent their sigs and consequently the personal information in their sigs from being Web viewable.
     
    Many email programs quote or forward original messages by preceding them with a line something like "------ original message follows -------".  Of course the two-dashes rule will cut off everything after that.  This both protects the list from displaying a lot of unneeded quoted messages, and forces us into quoting deliberately.  The preferred quoting method is to precede each quoted line with a greater-than symbol (">").  Some email programs do this automatically and others do not or have it as an option that you must set deliberately.
     
    If you like to use dashes as underlines and don't want everything below the dashes cut off, try preceding the line of dashes with something else (like a space) or try just using equal signs = or underscores _ instead of dashes.
     
  3. My post has blank lines in the middle of paragraphs.  How do I make it stop doing that?
     
    See the question below. It's basically the same problem.
     
  4. Some people's messages seem to have paragraphs with lines that are cut short.  Is there a way to fix that?
     
    Most email programs today automatically wrap text inside a paragraph when you compose it. This means that you don't have to hit 'Enter' at the end of a line but it also means that if you do hit 'Enter' it will force the line to end there. Since not all message viewers are the same width these extra 'new line' spots that you have inserted by hitting 'Enter' won't necessarily be in the right place, causing the appearance of prematurely terminating lines as the line wraps in the viewpane due to its length then ends due to your 'new line' entry.
     
    For message composers the solution is to leave all wrapping to your email program and only hit 'Enter' at the end of a paragraph. Setting your email program to wrap at 70 characters or less would be helpful too.
     
    For viewers, messages with long lines and forced 'new lines' can often be made to look right simply by expanding the window, leaving the lines enough room to end before being forced to wrap by the width of your browser window. Grabbing the bar to the left of the message and pulling it further left might even be enough (unless it cuts into the message list too much) without expanding the whole window.
     
  5. My messages aren't getting through at all. What do I do?
     
    Contact the list owner directly at his/her personal address or any list administration address you may have been given. It is possible that your email isn't arriving at the mailserver at all (for any reason) and not only just not getting to the list, so if you don't get a reply quickly try other means like a different email account or telephone.
     
  6. I need to start a list or log. What are the differences and how do I start and run one?
     
    Lists and Logs are pretty much the same thing. They are simply the Web reflection of an email folder. Postings are sent to them by authorized users via email. Mailing lists can be made to be reflected in this manner but so can private email folders, so one could use the List/Log facility as a sort of message board or "weblog" as well as a list message archive. Creating and managing messages is done via email program (eg. WorldClient). Setting up the list or log is done by the Information Technology department.