The IFIS mailing lists

IFIS has 4 mailing lists available:

announce is for the broadcasting of important information amongst IFIS members. Meetings, new books just released, new series about to appear on our TVs, etc. (This might (perhaps) later be moderated so that only comittee members can post directly. All other posts will be sent to a comittee member to check first.)
chat is for members to generally chat about anything sci-fi related. Anything at all. Burning the books, how crap last night's episode of "Voyager" was, who would win if the death star met the borg, anything. This list is not moderated. Anyone can post to it.
writing is for the exchange of creative writing. In other words, somewhere where IFIS folks can post F&SF writings of their own, and have them "gently critiqued" by the other readers.
project is for talking about the latest IFIS project. At the moment, there's a vague plan that we make a sci-fi movie, I think.
and finally.. committee is the address you should talk to if you want to be added/removed from the lists if you're not able to use the form on the web pages. You mail committee if you think the lists might not be working, and you mail committee if you've got any complaints about the way the lists are run or anything. DO NOT spam everyone on the lists with your silly test posts.

To mail one of the lists, you mail listname@ifis.org.uk, where listname is one of chat, announce, writing, or project

If you don't fancy filling your mail accounts with emails from the lists, you can read and post to the lists via the archives as if they were a message board. It's strongly recommended though that you keep receiving at least the announce list, so you keep informed about what the society is up to.

Guidelines

Ages ago I wrote some approximate guidelines for the 2 main lists, and nobody's objected to them, so I'll quote them here:

For the moment I suggest (but won't rigidly enforce) the following guidelines:

announce@ifis.org.uk

"Film night tomorrow"
"Christmas dinner arrangements"
"sci-fi convention next weekend in birmingham"
"AGM next week in ALT3"
"that sci-fi shop in egham is having a book sale!"
"New series of blakes 7 starts december 12th" if you're just telling us?
etc.

chat@ifis.org.uk

"New series of blakes 7 starts december 12th" if you're intending to chat about it too.
"that sci-fi shop in egham is actually quite expensive"
"where's our bloody library"
"grumble moan insult the committee whine whinge"
"Why have I got too much email"
"Should we have a new IFIS mailing-list for [blah]?"
"what should we do about all these damned ex-students?"
"what should we do about all these damned students?"
"borg v death-star, value of pi near black holes, etc etc etc"
"isn't Terry's / Rowling's / whoever's new book really cool?"

ifis-chat should probably be the kind of stuff we TALK about down at the pub. ifis-announce should probably be the kind of stuff we grab everyone's attention for and SHOUT about down at the pub, and/or put up posters for, give out leaflets, etc.

Finally, some important bits of "nettiquette":

Do NOT quote the whole of a 5-page email to just add 2 or 3 lines of reply. Trim where appropriate... On the other hand, DO leave enough context that people know what you're answering. An email suddenly saying "yes" in amongst 20 different conversations does NOT make any sense.
Chain letters, virus warnings (esp fake ones) test posts, and non-sci-fi related humour do NOT belong here. Try to stay on topic.
Try to keep flame-wars off the list. If you're getting angry at someone, please take it to private email so the rest of us don't have to put up with it.

These are just my guidelines. As you can see, I'm not even certain about all of them myself. Better suggestions are welcome - rant and rave about this on CHAT please, not ANNOUNCE.

Joining / Leaving the lists

If you wish to join, leave or change which email address is on any of the lists, simply go to the email setup page. There it lists all the lists you have access to. Select the list you want to change and then add or remove your email addresses and click Update.

The email setup page does require you to log in. If you have forgotten or do not know what your password is, we can reset it for you.

And the archives!!!

finally, there are archives of all past posts to IFIS lists!