SKEPTIC Frequently Asked Questions (Sort Of)

Questions:

• What are the rough ground rules for SKEPTIC discussions?
• How do I get help about SKEPTIC?
• What do I do if I'm overwhelmed by the quantity of mail?
• How do I suspend my susbscription while on vacation?
• How do I get off the list?
• What do I do about possible mail problems?
• How do I get archived postings?
• How do I use the "Reply-To:" mail header?

Usually, courtesy and some common sense will prevent you from getting into hot water, either with others on the mailing list or with the list owner. After all, we are all mainly interested in a free, informative discussion of paranormal and fringe-science ideas, preferably without having to wade through tons of irrelevant and boring postings in the process.

These rough guidelines might help you:

• Try to keep on-topic. SKEPTIC is about paranormal and fringe-science issues, and the scientific and philosophical matters which arise in debating these. We try not to be too rigid in drawing boundaries; in the past, we have gone into urban legends, Marxist and libertarian politics, feminism and anti-feminism, conspiracy theories, meta-ethics, the merits of vegetarianism, religion, educational questions, weird philosophy, math, and a whole host of topics besides the standard paranormal fare. As long as there is a clear connection to skepticism, and the discussion does not become a firestorm which drowns out our primary concerns, things usually work out fine.

• Avoid making skepticism an ideology. Yes, "skepticism" is a vague notion, but we still have a rough idea what we are interested in criticizing and what we are content to leave to other mailing lists. You might be convinced the ideology you despise is the epitome of irrationality, and that the duty of every True Skeptic is to combat it unto her last breath. Too bad. We don't mind the occasional foray into politics or religion here, but if you find yourself evangelizing, it's time to slow down and move onto something else.

• Don't waste bandwidth. This can be a busy list in the heat of a debate. When you're receiving a hundred messages a day, it can be rather irritating if many of these are just one to three line messages that don't say much besides expressing agreement, disagreement, or making some less-than-crucial comment. These are best done by private e-mail sent to the original poster. This doesn't mean you should act like a stuffy academic and stamp out all humor or personal chattiness wherever you see it. Just use your judgement -- keep in mind that hundreds of people will read what you post, so try to say something worthwhile.

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  Getting Help

  First of all, bookmark this FAQ. When it doesn't help, send all questions related to the list to skeptic-request@lists.johnshopkins.edu. This includes requests for help and any and all complaints. Please do not post such material to SKEPTIC itself unless there is a good reason.

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  Digests

  If you can't deal with the volume this list generates every day, but would like to look at what's going on periodically, you might consider subscribing in digest mode. This means you will get everything bundled together and sent as one piece of mail about once every 24 hours, instead of being mailed every posting individually. Send

  set skeptic digest

  or

  set skeptic digestplain (to receive the digest in plain text format).

  to sympa@lists.johnshopkins.edu

  Digests can be convenient to delete all the day's message traffic at once if you feel disinclined to read it, or if the number of messages received in a day is a problem for you.

  Sending "set skeptic mail" reverts to the usual operation; individual mail received as posted.

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  Suspending List Mail

  If you're going to be away for a while, and would like to stop receiving SKEPTIC mail during that time, send:

  set skeptic nomail

  to sympa@lists.johnshopkins.edu. This'll suspend your mail, while keeping you on the list. This is safer than signing off and rejoining later. When you want to start receiving mail again, use:

  set skeptic mail (to revive the subscription in standard format) or

  set skeptic digest

  set skeptic digestplain (to revive the subscription in digest or plaintext digest format, respectively).

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  Unsubscribing

  If you want to leave SKEPTIC, send:

  unsubscribe skeptic

  to sympa@lists.johnshopkins.edu.

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  Mail Problems

  Since SKEPTIC is a fairly active list, it will be unusual to have one day where you receive nothing, let alone a few in a row. In this case, chances are that the list has had trouble sending mail to you, and the list management software may have automatically deleted you from the list. If you haven't received mail from SKEPTIC for a day or two, contact the list owner at skeptic-request@lists.johnshopkins.edu

  Normally, the list owner should contact you within 24 hours. If he does not, it is most likely that the mailing list system itself is down. In that case the list owner will get back to you as soon as possible. If you think that the list system itself is down, you can contact the list owner at lcleave1@jhu.edu (that is, "LCLEAVE" and the numeral "1", not a lower case "L").

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• List Archives

  The mailing list management system archives past list mail since June, 2008, when the list migrated to a new list management system. In order to retrieve archives of the list, send the appropriate command (listed below) to sympa@lists.johnshopkins.edu:

  index skeptic	*to retrieve a list of the archive files
  get skeptic [file]	*to retrieve an archive file (get the [file]
  parameter using the index command
  last skeptic	*to retrieve the last message posted to the list

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  The "Reply-To" Header

  The "Reply-To:" mail header on SKEPTIC mail most often directs replies back to the list itself, but sometimes it is replaced by the address of an individual poster. This occasionally leads to confusion when a subscriber just hits "r" to reply to a message, to discover that the message is sent privately instead of to the whole list.

  The list is set so that, if messages posted to it have a "Reply-To:" mail header, it keeps it, if not, it puts in a "Reply-To:" header directing replies to SKEPTIC. The idea is to let subscribers choose to direct replies off-list when appropriate. For example, you might request some information, but do not need replies broadcast to the whole list. In that case, you would set "Reply-To:" your own e-mail address.

  To use this feature, just add the line "Reply-To: xxx@yyy" to the headers of your outgoing mail. How you would go about doing this depends on your mail system.

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  Len Cleavelin, SKEPTIC list owner
  skeptic-request@lists.johnshopkins.edu