Some frequently asked questions about the Ferret Mailing List | Last Modified: Mon Aug 30 16:15:46 EDT 1993 | Lines changed from the previous version are marked with a | in column 1. | Chris Lewis, Moderator Well, h'm, let's see. Here's a couple of things you should know. 1) What is the ferret mailing list? The ferret mailing list (FML) is a group of people interested in ferrets, Mustela Putorius Furo, as pets. All aspects of ferrets are discussed, advocacy (see question 7), funny stories, health, training, ferret frolics (parties) and so on. The FML is "home" on the UUCP network and indirectly the Internet. | It is forwarded by some people to other networks such CompuServe | (by Katie Fritz). (See the editorial policy below for more about | forwarding the FML to other networks). ferret.ocunix.on.ca is a tiny little single-user UNIX machine situated in the countryside north and west of Ottawa (the capital of Canada in case you didn't know), Ontario, Canada. If you look at a map, just find the border of Quebec and Ontario where it hits the St. Lawrence River (at New York State). Run your finger up the border (actually, the Ottawa River), and just past Ottawa (at Dunrobin on a good map) you'll squish our house ;-) We're about 3 miles in from the river on the Ontario side. Ferret.ocunix.on.ca is UUCP connected to the Internet, and has an MX record at uunet.ca. As such it isn't really on the Internet, but is for email purposes. 2) How does it work? Chris Lewis (me) is the moderator of the FML. Articles are sent to me via electronic mail, and I produce a digest of whatever I receive, and then email it out to each of the subscribers. Turnaround time can be anywhere from less than a day to a week or two (I go on vacation too you know!) See (8) for the editorial policy. | To help control my costs, distribution is aided by a "mail exploder" | at the City University of New York - I email a copy of the latest | issue of the FML to CUNY and it is automatically redistributed to | many of the subscribers from there. If you are making announcements of events or other time-critical information, please give me as much advance notice as possible. Nothing worse than posting an announcement for a Ferret Frolic a week after it happened. 3) PLEASE READ: Anonymous posting. Some states: California, | Michigan, Massachusetts, Hawaii, DC plus several counties, cities and towns consider ferrets to be dangerous wild animals and have banned their ownership (see question 7). If you are in one of these places, posting to FML could potentially have your name seen by hundreds of people - there is a danger, albeit slight, that your "authorities" could find out and confiscate and even euthanize your pet. But you can still post, because I will strip out any identifying information | from your message. Since I can't possibly remember which of the >200 people live where, it is up to you to help. Therefore, if you want anonymity, please make sure that you send articles to the "anonymous" address in (4) below. 4) What addresses do I send send stuff to? ferret-list@ferret.ocunix.on.ca is for articles. ferret-anon-list@ferret.ocunix.on.ca is for anonymous articles. ferret-request@ferret.ocunix.on.ca is for subscription requests information about the list, or list problem reports. If you're on BITNET, or some other braindamaged network that doesn't support MX records, you *might* be able to express these addresses as: ferret-list%ferret.ocunix.on.ca@uunet.uu.net ferret-anon-list%ferret.ocunix.on.ca@uunet.uu.net ferret-request%ferret.ocunix.on.ca@uunet.uu.net I can be reached a little more directly at: clewis@elegant.com or: 613 832-0541 But these should only be used in emergencies. | I make no claims to understand the weird addressing formats of proprietary/commercial networks such as CompuServe or GEnie. 5) How many members are there? | Currently around 250. Not including people who receive it by mail2news gateways (eg: Brown and Duke), or by upload to | CompuServe or Delphi, etc. 6) How long has this mailing list been active? Since December 1987. *1987*! Even I didn't realize it was that long. Same moderator, 3 or 4 different "home" machines. | Averaging about 75 issues a year. We're over 550 now. 7) Aren't ferrets wild and dangerous animals? That's the funniest thing I've ever heard about ferrets. Nonsense. Ferrets have a long history of domestication. As long, in fact, as cats do. Raised-as-pet ferrets are quite gentle and are good with children - though, like *any* other animal, ferrets and small children should be supervised by adults. However, through hysteria fomented by certain people (often who seem have a financial interest in the matter), ferrets have been banned in several places. For example, California. However, concerted effort in presenting the truth about these animals has resulted in the bans being lifted (eg: Alaska) 8) Editorial Policy: This is a brief description of the policy I impose on the list. Most of these items are intended to (a) keep traffic high quality ("high signal to noise ratio"), (b) keep traffic volume (and costs) reasonable, (c) be timely in distribution, (d) keep discussions civil, (e) provide an open forum and (f) avoid lawsuits. 1) Articles must be on the subject of ferrets, or of community interest to the FML membership. The latter is somewhat nebulous I realize, but it's intended to allow policy discussions and "news about FML members". 2) No material that I feel is simply offensive (in context). | 3) No ARC, PETA (or similar) propaganda. 4) No forgeries. Any incoming article should have a valid email return address pointing back to the real originator. Though, of course, I will delete it (and any other identifying information) in an anonymous article before broadcasting the article to the FML. 5) I don't alter the content of anything, except: - I will reformat text that's not line terminated properly. - Excessive signatures will be truncated. This basically means that a article goes untouched (spelling mistakes etc.), or not at all. 6) I reserve the right to terminate flame wars, overly long exchanges, or material with tenuous substantiation that may | subject me to a slander lawsuit. 7) Large-scale copying from other networks is not acceptable. Articles originating from other networks should either be with permission of the author, or, be considered a "fair-use" partial quotation or synopsis. 8) News or network gatewaying requires permission from me. | 9) Until further notice, gatewaying or forwarding of FML articles | and issues to GEnie and/or NVN is *prohibited*. This is due to | policy issues at GEnie and is not meant as a general comment | about the GEnie service itself. Rejections will be notified to the originator. In the case of material that's "nearly" okay, I will give the originator a chance to resubmit with changes, or justify content. This is more-or-less the same (and is intended to be so) as the "common policy" used by moderators of moderated USENET newsgroups. (1), (2) and (4) have been invoked once. (3) and (6) never. Termination policy: I won't do this except in extreme cases. I've not actually done a policy termination yet, and I'd rather not start. But to make things official (some people insist on formal definitions), here are the termination policies: bounce terminations: - if it's clear that a user or their machine has disappeared from the net, subscription termination is immediate. - if it appears likely that it's a temporary problem (like quota exceeded), I will suffer through a few bounces. - I will usually give all other bounces 2 or 3 more "chances". - I may attempt to fix addressing/routing if a solution is obvious (ie: I misspelled something). policy terminations: a) first and second violations: private email warning. b) third violation: public warning c) fourth violation: subscription terminated. Forgers and extremely offensive messages start at (b) (ie: one public warning and then termination). I should point out that since the FML is usually hand-editted, improper material will usually not get posted anyways. 9) How do I get backissues? | Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1992 22:45:35 -0500 (Slightly updated since). From: Bill Gruber Subject: Archives now available! The Ferret Mailing List archives are now available from the City University | of New York. All back-issues | have been placed on a LISTSERV mail server. I will BRIEFLY describe how to get to these things - if you need extra help, please let me know, I'd rather not clutter up this note with too many boring details. There are only three commands you need to know: INDEX FERRET and GET FERRET nnn and GET FERRET FAQ Send mail to LISTSERV@CUNYVM.BITNET or LISTSERV@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU The body of your mail should consist solely of one command per line. For, example, if you would like to see the index of available issues, send mail with the one line: INDEX FERRET If you would like to get issues 99 and 221, the body of your mail would be: GET FERRET 099 GET FERRET 221 | (Leading zeroes are no longer required, so SEND FERRET 99 is acceptable.) The index and/or back issues will be sent back to you via e-mail. | If you are at a BITNet site, you can send the commands interactively | instead of via e-mail, if you prefer. For example, CMS users on BITNet | may type: TELL LISTSERV AT CUNYVM INDEX FERRET I have NOT set up FTP access. I think other sites are working on that. If another site does not come through and/or I get hounded enough, I will consider it in the future. Thanks are in order to Chris for sending all the stuff to me and to CUNY for allowing use of the resources. Yes, I plan to add new issues to the archive as they come out. Please contact me at BIGCU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU if you have any questions. And... happy reading. Bill | Note that other files of interest to ferret owners may be added as | well. The commands to retrieve these files are the same: for example, | send mail with a command such as GET CONTACT LIST. What future issues | for information about new files. -- | Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | INTERNET: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca or clewis%ferret.ocunix.on.ca@uunet.ca | UUCP: uunet!uunet.ca!ecicrl!clewis Home & Business Phone: (613) 832-0541