Subscribe to BANJO-L

BANJO-L Subscription Information

What to expect when you subscribe to BANJO-L:

First-off: A "subscription" to a discussion list involves no money, it merely means having your name added to a list of people who automatically share copies of email about a particular topic. That topic for BANJO-L is--you guessed it--banjos. The community of folks (over 1,100 at this writing) now discussing things banjo on BANJO-L includes beginners, teachers, amateur performers, collectors, craftsmen, and some professional banjo players well known in banjo circles.

Subscribing to BANJO-L will probably result in your receiving up to 70 pieces of banjo-related email every day (we average ca. 50 messages per day), either individually or in a single, "digest" file. You can see a graph of these posting rates, if you are so inclined.

Instructions can be found on this page to help you to:

Subscribe to BANJO-L,

Temporarily postpone receipt of BANJO-L mail,

Set BANJO-L's mailings to Digest mode,

Read the digest mode with a special work-around for MS Internet Explorer, and even

Unsubscribe from BANJO-L (although we'll miss you...)

Subscribing

To SUBSCRIBE to BANJO-L Please visit https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/banjo-l. Please note that this is a secure page.

When you are successfully subscribed, you will receive a "Welcome" message from Marc Perdue, the BANJO-L Listowner. Save this message, for it lists the rules for BANJO-L, as well as instructions for unsubscribing, changing List settings, etc. If you have lost the message, a generic version of that message is here.

Sometime between now and the time you send your first post to BANJO-L, we would appreciate your reading the rules and guidelines for the list. You will also benefit from reading a post about "How to get the best use from BANJO-L," by Carroll Smith, who was addressing a beginner's comments about the information available from this List.

Digest Mode

After you have subscribed to BANJO-L, you can receive our exciting discussions in one of two formats: individual email or digest. In the former case, which is the default, you can anticipate receipt of 40 or so separate pieces of email every day as people ask questions of the list, answer those questions, express their opinions, or (*ahem*) post statistics (mea culpa). To get your mail this way, you need do nothing other than subscribe.

The advantages of receiving individual mailings include: 1) immediacy, i.e., you receive messages close to the time they were posted, so you can quickly snap off your response (giving you all day to regret having shot from the hip), and 2) the ability to respond easily to one message, keeping the thread alive, and quoting text.

In the case of Digest format, you will receive at least one (1) bulk message each day, containing all the separate messages of the day rolled up into one big message. The primary advantage of receiving a daily digest is having fewer messages in your mailbox (which can be important if you pay by the message, or if you don't want your boss to hear the "beep" of incoming BANJO-L mail). There is a disadvantage, in that it's much harder to respond to individual pieces of that big daily digest message.

If you do not wish to do all the above via your browser, you can also use email to accomplish most of these things:

To do this, you will need to send an email to banjo-l-request@virginia.edu with NO subject.

Please note: because all changes to your subscription options require you to enter your password, when you send an email to change your options you must have the following command as the FIRST command in the body of your email:

set authenticate < password > [address=< address >]
To set any of your options, you must include this command first, along with your membership password. If you're posting from an address other than your membership address, specify your membership address with `address=< address >' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!). In the body of the email, you can put any of the following options to change your settings:

set ack on
set ack off
When the `ack' option is turned on, you will receive an acknowledgement message whenever you post a message to the list.

set digest plain
set digest mime
set digest off
When the `digest' option is turned off, you will receive postings immediately when they are posted. Use `set digest plain' if instead you want to receive postings bundled into a plain text digest (i.e. RFC 1153 digest). Use `set digest mime' if instead you want to receive postings bundled together into a MIME digest.

set delivery on
set delivery off
Turn delivery on or off. This does not unsubscribe you, but instead tells Mailman not to deliver messages to you for now. This is useful if you're going on vacation. Be sure to use `set delivery on' when you return from vacation!

password [< oldpassword > < newpassword >] [address=< address >]
Retrieve or change your password. With no arguments, this returns your current password. With arguments < oldpassword > and < newpassword > you can change your password.

If you're posting from an address other than your membership address, specify your membership address with `address=< address >' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!). Note that in this case the response is always sent to the subscribed address.

unsubscribe [password] [address=< address >]
Unsubscribe from the mailing list. If given, your password must match your current password. If omitted, a confirmation email will be sent to the unsubscribing address. If you wish to unsubscribe an address other than the address you sent this request from, you may specify `address=< address >' (no brackets around the email address, and no quotes!)

While you're here, check out the Banjo Players' Directory if you wish to speak with or meet other folks interested in the banjo. If you would like to be included in, or removed from, this list, simply fill out the Directory Form.