Frequently Asked Questions for Bioacoustics-L
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Topics:
1. How do I get further information about bioacoustics?
2. How do I subscribe/change address/unsubscribe?
3. How do I send messages to Bioacoustics-L?
4. What are appropriate postings for Bioacoustics-L?
5. Can I post messages in Spanish/Swahili/Sanskrit/...?
6. How do I see old messages?
7. What are appropriate topics for the list?
8. How do I get further information about the list?
9. How do I help avoid electronic junk mail?
10. Why did my Bioacoustics-L subscription stop?
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1. How do I get further information about bioacoustics?
See the web page for the "Animal Bioacoustics" section of the
Acoustical Society of America:
http://cetus.pmel.noaa.gov/Bioacoustics.html
It contains web pages about these and other subjects:
* what bioacoustics is
* hardware and software for bioacoustics
* journals
* conferences
* centers for bioacoustics research
* sound libraries
* newsgroups
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2. How do I subscribe/change address/unsubscribe?
To subscribe to Bioacoustics-L, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message contents of
SUBSCRIBE Bioacoustics-L <your real name>
and you'll be automatically included in the list of
subscribers. Be sure to use your real name, rather than your
email address, like this:
SUBSCRIBE Bioacoustics-L Albert Einstein
The mailing-list software automatically gets your email address
from the header of your message. The subject line is ignored.
Note that the software tries to interpret EVERY line of the
message body as a command, so any "signature" text appended by
your mailer will confuse it.
When you first subscribe, you will receive a list password,
which is a string of digits. Save this password, and use it to
change your email address, like this:
SET Bioacoustics-L ADDRESS <password> <new email address>
To stop getting messages from the list, send a message like this:
UNSUBSCRIBE Bioacoustics-L
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3. How do I send messages to Bioacoustics-L?
To send mail to everyone on the list, address your message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please put your full name and email address somewhere inside each
message you post. The various mail-forwarding programs between
you and the readers of Bioacoustics-L often change or remove lines
in the message header, making it impossible for readers to tell
who sent a message. If you put text in the body of the message
identifying yourself and saying how to contact you, this won't be
a problem. Nearly all mail-sending programs have some facility
for defining a "signature" file that gets appended to every
outgoing message.
NOTE! Please be careful when replying to a message received from
the list. Your mail program may automatically reply to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], making your message go out to everyone
on the list. It's quite easy to make the mistake of replying to a
message and thinking you're mailing only to the sender of the
message, when in actuality you're sending to the entire list.
Before sending your message, please double check the "To:" line.
For administrative messages, such as for unsubscribing, see
question 2 above.
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4. What are appropriate postings for Bioacoustics-L?
First, please observe network etiquette. A good introduction to
it is found at
http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html#3
When posting, please take care to ensure that your message is
relevant. Before you post, consider these things:
- Are my words important and interesting enough to take up 900+
people's time?
- Would private email work about as well?
- Can I find the answer to my question reasonably quickly by other
means, such as a literature search? Please do not use the list
merely because you don't have a convenient library, or because
you haven't checked it yet.
- Does my message contribute something either scientifically or
technically?
- If it's scientific, does it talk about a hypothesis that could
be disproven? Personal observations are sometimes acceptable,
but only if they relate to a disprovable hypothesis.
- If it's technical, is it about something, such as field or lab
equipment, that will be interesting to a significant fraction of
the list readers?
- Is it polite? Especially, do not answer rudeness with more rudeness.
- Is the subject line informative?
- Is it about acoustics? In large part, messages about animal
feelings and about human feelings around animals belong
elsewhere.
The first item in this list is the most important. Before you
post, please CONSIDER CAREFULLY what you are saying, and think
about whether you are adding enough to the discussion to be worth
that many people's time. Imagine you are standing in front of an
audience of 900 people, and think again about whether you need to
post your message.
Please do NOT post messages about whether someone else's message
was appropriate for the list, polite, correctly punctuated, etc.
Such comments are almost never interesting to other people on the
list, and should be sent by private email. If you think that
someone else is getting away with poor behavior, send a message to
the list manager ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), who will
probably already have reminded the offending person about
reasonable Internet behavior.
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5. Can I post messages in Spanish/Swahili/Sanskrit/...?
The preferred language of Bioacoustics-L is English. Postings in
other languages are acceptable, but if at all possible, please
provide an English translation of your message. To keep the
number of messages low, please include the translation in the
original posting.
If you see a posting that lacks an English version and wish to
contribute a translation, please send it to the list manager
([EMAIL PROTECTED]), who will make sure that only
one translation gets posted.
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6. Is there a way to see old messages?
Messages that have been sent to Bioacoustics-L are archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/bioacoustics-l%40cornell.edu/
This archive has been in use only since mid-February 2002. Older
messages are unfortunately not available.
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7. What are appropriate topics for the list?
[from the welcome message]
The Bioacoustics-L mailing list is for discussion of any subjects
related to the scientific study of sound in the natural world,
including animal communication, sonar, acoustic behavior, sound
production, hearing physiology and auditory processes, signal
processing for bioacoustics, the impact of noise on animals,
acoustic tracking, and any other topics that may come up.
Discussion of experimental methods and equipment, queries for
information, announcements of results, and raising of public
policy questions answerable by science are all welcome.
Advertising is not acceptable on the list. The only type of
announcement that should appear is if a major new product is
introduced. Then, a one- or two-line notice, with a pointer to
further information (web page or email address), is acceptable.
Minor additions to existing product lines or changes to web pages
to not warrant a new message. People who advertise a company's
wares on Bioacoustics-L excessively will be removed from the
list.
Announcements of job openings are welcome, but postings for jobs
wanted are not.
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8. How do I get further information about the list?
To find out more things you can do with mailing lists, such
as telling the list processor to send daily digests instead of
immediately forwarding every message as it comes in, point your
WWW browser at the ListProc Guide:
http://www.cren.net/listproc/docs/usercard.html
If you have any questions about Bioacoustics-L, contact the
list manager (currently Dave Mellinger) by sending email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you have any questions about the Cornell list server, contact
the list server manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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9. How do I help avoid electronic junk mail?
Junk email is a growing problem, and mailing lists can sometimes
contribute to it. Some companies sell lists of email addresses
for junk mailings. Though it is against Cornell's rules (and
possibly the law), it's possible for these companies to get
addresses from the Bioacoustics-L subscribers list. By sending
the command
review bioacoustics-l
to [EMAIL PROTECTED], these companies could get a list of
current subscribers.
Starting September 1996, the subscribers list is available only to
those currently on the list. This restriction puts at least one
roadblock up for email-address collectors. The option also exists
to make the subscribers list completely hidden, so that not even
subscribers can see it, but hopefully that option won't be needed.
If you don't want to appear on the subscribers list at all, you
can send the command
set bioacoustics-l conceal yes
to [EMAIL PROTECTED]; then no one will see your email address.
(Except me, the list manager, and I'm not about to send the
subscribers list out to anyone.)
To undo this command, and reset it to the default state, do
set bioacoustics-l conceal no
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10. Why did my Bioacoustics-L subscription stop?
Your subscription can get cancelled if your email is
undeliverable, which happens (among other times) when your email
in-box fills up. Mailers send 3-5 messages back to me, the list
owner, for every undeliverable message. Because of the level of
traffic on Bioacoustics-L and the number of subscribers, I get
quite a lot of these messages. To avoid getting flooded with
messages, I have to delete undeliverable addresses quickly,
typically a day or two after messages start to bounce.
So if you find no Bioacoustics-L messages for a few days or a
week, try subscribing to the list again. See question 1, above,
for how to do it.
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This FAQ page is maintained by Dave Mellinger, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please send email about any needed additions and corrections.
