Subject: The *New & Improved* Lighting Mailing List

From: [email-masked] (Jonathan E. Hardis)
Date: 9 May 1995 12:21:28 -0400

Effective immediately, the Lighting mailing list is now a "Moderated"
mailing list.

This means that no longer can you, or anyone else, post messages that will
be automatically resent to everyone.  Now, the moderator will have to
review all messages first and manually approve their posting.  This will
cause a time delay before messages are publicized, but the idea is that it
greatly improve the signal to noise ratio of the mailing list.

Clay Belcher, who was instrumental in starting both this list and the
sci.engr.lighting newsgroup, has offered to act as the moderator.  Indeed,
I was so glad that someone offered to help, I hacked out a way to make
a moderated mailing list with this software (which until now didn't support
moderated mailing lists).

Clay will judge the suitability of each message for delivery to the mailing
list subscribers.  He'll say more about how he views his job, later.  In
general, the idea is this:

Messages suitable for posting to Lighting:

  1)  Technical information of general interest.
  2)  Technical questions in search of an answer.
  3)  Answers to the above, so everyone knows that the question has
      been answered.
  4)  Commentary on any of the above, provided the commentary contains
      additional information.

Message *not* suitable for posting to Lighting:

  1)  Administrivia messages, such as "subscribe" and "unsubscribe."
      (These should be sent to "Lighting-Request"!)
  2)  Unsolicited advertisements
  3)  Messages intended for a single recipient, such as:
      a)  Please send me a copy of that, too
      b)  Hi Charlie, how you been doin'?
      c)  I liked your answer to...
      d)  Will you be at the conference?
  4)  Commentary on postings without technical content (such as "Bull...").
  5)  Anything you wouldn't want your mother or lawyer to see.

If anyone posts an unsuitable message to Lighting, the moderator, at his
option, may send an explanation to the sender, or simply ignore it.

If anyone is dissatisfied about the job the moderator is doing, please send
private EMail to him first to try to resolve your complaint.
Failing that, you are welcome to send your complaints to me.

I hope this improves the readibility of the mailing list.  Remember, the
sci.engr.lighting newsgroup is still as anarchistic as it has always been.

  - Jonathan