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Athena Email List Rules and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)
Table of Contents
Welcome and Introduction
Focus of Athena
Topics not-allowed
Rules of Athena-land
Etiquette of Posting
Regular vs. Digest Subscriptions
Archives
INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME
Dear New Athenians,
It's important for members to understand what Athena is about, how we do things, and our RULES for posting. Please read and understand the list rules.
Athena is an "open forum" which means any topic outlined below can be brought up at any time.
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FOCUS OF ATHENA IS ALWAYS ABOUT EDUCATION
1. Alternative medicine in general
2. Flower and gem essence provings and information
3. Homeopathy, classical topics
4. Medical astrology topics
5. Astrology topics
6. Spiritual and metaphysical topics (not organized religion)
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WE DO NOT ALLOW:
1. Political discussions
2. Religious (organized type) discussions
3. Prayer lists for a particular person
4. There is NO posting of URLS or web sites addresses, nor copyrighted material WITHOUT PRIOR APPROVAL of list owner, Eileen Nauman (docbones@gotsky.com ).
Athena is an educational list interested in finding out the TRUTH about a topic. One way to do that is to have our list members share their experiences. Experience is the most powerful teacher of all, and we at Athena, embrace a person's individual experience.
Also, our core faculty members will, from time to time, write an article on their expertise. For example, because I'm a medical astrologer, I may pop in with an article on a planet going retrograde or direct (and how it may affect us), or information on an up and coming eclipse, or a health related issue. As a homeopath, I will also be writing articles on or about homeopathy and homeopathic remedies. These articles will be posted from time to time, with no particular schedule.
Athena is a private list, owned by author and educator Eileen Nauman. When in doubt about anything, ask Eileen. This is not about cramping your style, confusing you, or curtailing your freedom of speech or expression. It's about acting within the vision of the list owner. Athena is Eileen's vision of a Fifth World community committed to Mother Earth, driven by heart, respect and a safe place to share your experiences within the boundaries above. Our community, Athena, with its related website Medicine Garden, is a metaphysical community in cyberspace.
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RULES OF ATHENA
1. NO POSTING OF URLS or websites without prior approval of listowner Eileen Nauman (docbones@gotsky.com ). The reason for no posting of URLS without permission is to ensure relevance and quality in alignment with the vision of the list owner.
2. COPYRIGHT ISSUES.
POSTING INFO FROM OTHER WEB SITES? DON'T DO IT UNLESS.....
- Brief quotes or a couple of paragraphs, well cited with
author name, book/article/periodical title, AND with your own commentary, are within fair use law unless the author's copyright notice specifies otherwise.
- Whole articles or substantial portions of another
author's text require a different treatment. First, if you have an article from another website that you feel is extremely pertinent to Athena (educational in content), you
MUST get: Permission from the ORIGINATOR of that text, first, to potentially post it to Athena. Once you have the original author's permission, you then must send it to the
list owner Eileen PRIVATELY at: docbones@gotsky.com
NEVER post an article to Athena without prior approval. Failure to heed this rule will result in being banned--permanently. This is due to the legal ramifications of copyright violation.
3. NO ADVERTISING. Athena is not the place to
advertise/market products or services, openly or otherwise.
This includes no advertising or URLs in your signature file.
If you have an automatic sigfile that includes these, turn
it off. Athena is not a place to be looking for new clients
or customers. The purpose of Athena is educational only
(Exception: Athena Core Faculty members are allowed to
advertise their services and products -- this is in
compensation for their service to the list as core faculty).
4. NO ATTACHMENTS, PICTURES, OR FORMATTED FILES. Set
email program to Plain Text.
5. SIGNATURE FILES (SIGFILE). If you use a sigfile at the
end of your posts, keep it brief. Better yet, turn off
automatic sigfiles for Athena. Again, no advertising in
sigfiles.
6. CHECK and DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR HEADERS BEFORE SENDING A
POST TO ATHENA. This is a good habit to get into with
regard to ANY email or e-list posting. The "Reply-To:"
field for Athena-list is set to reply to the INDIVIDUAL.
This is to prevent people mistakenly sending a private post
to the entire list, which could be embarrassing.
Therefore, to post to Athena, you need to change the
headers and send To: the LIST address. It's a good practice
to bcc: or cc: yourself just in case anything happens to the
post, and you may need to re-send it -- this also gives you
an instant copy for your reference and files.
7. DEAD THREAD - What does that mean?
If a moderator notes "Dead Thread" in the title of a post,
this means NO MORE posting to that thread.
It was an inappropriate topic, or there was some other
problem with it.
8. DO NOT send unsubscribe or admin requests to the entire
list! Always use the automated SUB/UNSUB address to
unsubscribe and, failing that, email Tricia Speed, our webmistress for
help at support@sunbirdconsulting.com
It's wise to keep a dedicated notebook or folder near your
computer with various e-list, moderator, and UNSUB
addresses/instructions for each list you're on, for your
reference. Hard disks have been known to fail. Don't be
caught without your important addresses in a hardcopy
reference.
It's also wise to NOT keep an electronic address book with
these addresses in it, as addresses can then be plucked out
of there by viruses, forged, spammed all over the net, etc.
A hardcopy notebook or folder makes a better place
to keep your e-list-related addresses.
THE ATHENA LIST HAS SEVERAL IMPORTANT ADDRESSES:
- Address to POST to the Athena list: athena@topica.com
- Address for ADMIN purposes - listowner and moderator addresses.
Listowner: Eileen Nauman, docbones@gotsky.com
Moderator:
Gail Carswell, rockdoc@earthlink.com
Technical problems: Tricia Speed, support@sunbird-consulting.com
- Automated SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE address, with special instructions to make the action successful. Go to the bottom of any athena@topica.com email. You'll see the following instructions. Follow them and you can be successful.
- EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: athena-unsubscribe@topica.com
9. POLITICAL SENSITIVITY. Support the purposes and rules
of Athena list as a whole, Eileen Nauman the listowner,
moderator, and core faculty. Do not be openly or
covertly hostile, nasty, snide, sarcastic, coy, or otherwise
negative regarding these matters. If you disagree with the
rules and ways of Athena, you should go elsewhere.
Occasional disagreement on educational topics can and should
be handled with respect and dignity all around. If you have
questions or concerns in this area, speak with the listowner
or co-moderators privately.
10. BANS. Failure to heed the rules of Athena, especially
regarding "no posting of URLs or website addresses without
permission of a moderator", can result in a warning or a BAN from the list, at the discretion of the listowner.
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REGULAR vs. DIGEST SUBSCRIPTIONS
Athena is a fairly high-traffic list with an average 25
messages per day, sometimes many more. Some subscribers,
especially lurkers, prefer to receive ONE large daily digest
sent at the end of the day, rather than individual messages. The use of the digest format may also be used when going on vacation or when you will be away from your email for an extended period of time. This will prevent your list mail from being bounced back to the server which may result in an automatic unsubscription from the list.
To
subscribe to digest-mode, log into your Topica account and
unsubscribe from individual emails and select the digest format option or if you are already in digest mode you can switch to individual emails. You can do this as needed.
If you're on Digest mode, and ever do post to Athena, change
your "Subject" header appropriately, rather than allow it to
say "Digest" etc.
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ARCHIVES
Athena posts are archived, which is a great
research and learning tool. If you feel you didn't receive
certain posts from the list, or need a particular post
you've lost or deleted, go to the archives to find it. Do
NOT ask on the list itself. If you have trouble using the
archives, write to a moderator privately for help. Archives
are located at http://lists.topica.com. To view the archives:
1. Log into your topica account
2. Click onto "My Topica"
3. Click onto "Athena"
4. Directly to the left is "List Activity"
5. Click on "Read Current Messages"
Please note, this is a LIST, not an 'official' archives where you can find subjects. It is a list of emails sent at the time they were sent in order on a given day.
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HOW TO MAKE YOUR POSTS LOOK GOOD
What does that mean on ATHENA? Make your formatting as simple, universally
easy-to-read, and as "vanilla" as possible. Nothing fancy.
Because you don't know what your post will look like in all
emailers, here are some guidelines to help ensure
universally good-looking, easy-to-read posts. You may even find these guidelines improve the look of your everyday emails and posting for other lists you're on as well.
- Set your emailer to Plain Text. NO html or rich text.
- NO LineWrap (i.e. continuous typing without hard returns).
- WHITE SPACE. Cyberspace is vast. There is no shortage
of space in cyberspace. Therefore, create "white space"
(i.e. blank, open space) by using generous right margins
and space between paragraphs, to make your writing easy on
the eyes, more inviting to read. Double or even triple
space between paragraphs. Leave a generous right margin.
The document that you're reading here is an example of
formatting and use of white space.
-
RIGHT MARGIN. Leaving a generous right margin not only
makes your posts easier to read, it allows space for
subsequent replies without everything becoming a visual mess
as a subject "thread" evolves. Consider 80 characters wide
a maximum line width. However, 60-70 characters wide is an
IDEAL LINE WIDTH for most purposes, and will automatically
create a generous right margin. If you can set a line width
in characters, do it. In most contemporary emailers, what
works is to hit a hard return about 75% of the way across
your screen.
- HOW TO QUOTE. Get your attributions right! Be sure
you're quoting people correctly. Attribute the right text
to the right person. People hate to be misquoted,
especially on lists that are archived and searchable for
years by friends, enemies and spies alike. Professionals writing in their fields of expertise especially hate to be misquoted, or to have their name omitted from their own
words, or have someone else's words attributed to them in
error. Mis-attribution is a common mistake among careless
posters. Please be careful and responsible with quotations.
Especially in a long thread where there may be several
people's quotes in a post, it's very important to see
clearly who is saying what, and to get the
attributions/quotations right. When quoting, use standard
quotation marks (" ...") or pointer brackets ( >>
... << ), in addition to citing the author. For example: Mary Smith wrote:
" ........"
- Quote or repeat ONLY relevant portions of text you're
commenting on, just what's needed for adequate reference and
intelligibility. That means you must first HIGHLIGHT the text you want to refer to in your reply-post. Then, you must COPY it and then PASTE it into your present email document body. DON'T repeat someone's whole post with a comment at top or bottom -- sheesh! This jams mailboxes with useless, extraneous information everyone already has. What is appropriate is a couple of lines of cut/paste text or at the most, an 8-line paragraph. Less is more in this case.
Be sure your own text is separated from someone's that
you're quoting or commenting on. Why do we mention this?
Many current emailers including the popular AOL need a
triple-space action after the quoted section to avoid ending
up with your own comments butted right up to the other
person's with no visual break. Notice how yours and others'
posts look in email and archives. You'll soon develop an
appreciation for how creating more white space (blank space)
makes your posts so much more readable and easy on the eyes.
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