HLFIC-L Posting Guidelines and Membership rules
** Guidelines for the Highlander Fiction Listserv **
(last updated 30 January 1998 - recent changes are marked by asterisks
in the first column)
1. Fiction! (poetry welcome, too)
HLFIC-L, as the name implies, is for Highlander the sharing of
fan-written fiction. Narrative prose is the most popular format,
but scripts, poems, songs or whatever are welcome, as long as
they relate to Highlander.
Anything that's not a story should be posted with the DISCUSS
topic (See below for instructions on how to use TOPICS).
If you wish to comment on a story, HLFIC-L has been set up so
that your replies, if your mailer program is RFC822 compliant,
will go directly to the original poster.
Do not EVER send anything via "attachment" to the HLFIC-L mailing
list. Some people may get it intact, but most people will
NOT. Most people will simply get 95K of gibberish.
Cut and paste text into your e-mail program. If it's too long to
be cut and pasted, then it's TOO LONG, and needs to be broken up
into sections. If it's not text, then it should NOT be going to
the HLFIC-L.
We suggest that story posts be no more than 350 lines each out of
consideration for subscribers with mail programs that limit the
size of incoming mail messages.
For info on getting past stories or sections of stories, get the
retrieval instructions from Debbie Douglass by sending her email
at douglass@chaplin.ndhm.gtegsc.com. If you include 'Send HLFIC
Instruct' in the Subject line your request will be handled
automatically.
All stories (up to but not including the current month) posted
since the inception of HLFIC-L are archived on the ftp site which
is accessible through World Wide Web. On the
site is a full Index which lists alphabetically each story by its
parts (filename), date posted, and the poster (who is usually the
author). Where the author is not the poster the author's name has
been added.
WWW -> http://www.highlander.org/lists/
2. Standard disclaimers
3. Story segment length
Due to the limitations of mailers on certain popular commercial
services we ask that you limit each story segment to 350 lines.
4. NO REPOSTS (only revisions)!
All post are automatically archived. Please do not repost. Rewrites
or other major revisions are ok, but if there aren't any changes,
or changes are very minor, PLEASE DON'T repost it. If you post a
rewrite of something you've posted before, please put "revised" or
"rewrite" or something like that in the subject line of each
section. When you post a revision please post all story parts,
not just what changed.
5. PLEASE LIMIT yourself to no more than 8 story posts per story a
day.
We have a lot more authors now and the bandwidth on HLFIC-L has
gone up. Posting all of a 35 part story is sure to break the
email limit for a majority of our subscribers.
6. Subject line - Do's and Don'ts
Please do not put comments on the subject line. Please number
your story parts and include the total number if you know what
it's going to be. Part numbers should always be at the end of the
line. Please use arabic numbers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0). Don't
use roman numerals or spell out story part numbers. Examples of
subject lines:
Hounds of Glory 4 of 15
Hounds of Glory 04-15
Hounds of Glory (4/15)
If you are posting a story for someone else be sure to include
that person's name and email address (if available) in the top of
each story part.
7. Label sex, violence, and language
HLFIC-L has been set up for TOPICS and one of those topics is
the ADULT topic. Stories containing explicit sex, graphic
violence,or profanity worse than what would be in a PG-13 movie
are acceptable for posting, but you must put 'ADULT: at the very
beginning of the Subject line of each post of a story part. Also
include a warning at the top of the story explaining why the
story needs the ADULT classification. ALL new subscriptions to
HLFIC-L are created with the ADULT topic turned off. See the
section on TOPICS below for instructions about how to turn this
on. If you're posting your story in parts, you must put 'ADULT:'
in the subject line of EACH and EVERY part and put a warning at
the top of EACH and EVERY part IRREGARDLESS of whether that
particular part has any ADULT material.
8. TOPICS
* As I mentioned above HLFIC-L has been set up with TOPICS and I
* have defined ADULT, XOVER, ADULTXOVER, WAR, DISCUSS, and Other as
* valid topics. The default topics for new subscriptions is ADMIN,
* XOVER, and Other.
ADULT - to be used for all posts that include material that
would exceed the PG-13 movie rating.
XOVER - to be used for all posts that involve crossing the
Highlander universe with other fandom universes, such
as Star Trek, Forever Knight, X Files, etc.
ADULTXOVER - to be used for all XOVER posts that include material
that would exceed the PG-13 movie rating (see above for
XOVER definition).
WAR - This is a very special topic to be used only when there
is a properly authorized and sanctioned round-robin
fiction WAR in progress on HLFIC-L. If and when we have
another one of these all current subscribers will be
given advance notice.
* DISCUSS - To be used to discuss Highlander fanfic, comments about
* someone's work, fanfic techniques, and announcing
* FANZINES, and anything of a non-fiction nature. -ALL-
* non-fiction posts should be posted with this TOPIC.
* TEST - No one but the list owner receives the TEST topic by
* DEFAULT. BUT You may turn it on and off (or ask a
* fellow subscriber to turn it on to help you)
* temporarily if you desire to test your story posts for
* the quoted-printable problem (all those stupid '='
* littered all over your story). You may leave it on if
* you feel like it. If you set TOPICS on your
* subscription to ALL you will receive any TEST posts.
* Other - a catch-all topic for all FICTION posts that don't fall
* under any of the above classifications. All messages
* that do not include a valid topic designator are
* processed by the LISTSERV as the OTHER topic. There is
* no need to put the OTHER topic designator on the
* Subject line of any post to HLFIC-L for it to be
* processed as an OTHER topic post.
==== -ALL- non-fiction posts should be posted with the DISCUSS topic. ====
To check to see what TOPICS are currently active on your
subscription send the following command inside an email message
to LISTSERV@psuvm.psu.edu (removed any leading spaces):
query HLFIC-L
Using a plus(+) or minus(-) in the following command will turn
on or turn off a TOPIC:
SET HLFIC-L TOPICS: +ADULT -WAR
If you sent that command to LISTSERV@psuvm.psu.edu you would have
turned on the ADULT topic and turned off the WAR topic
If You Are Under-age YOU SHOULD NOT turn on the ADULT topic
without the approval of your parents.
Posting using TOPICS
If your story qualifies for one of the above TOPICS (except the
'Other' topic) when you post each story part you should put the
appropriate TOPIC followed by a colon(:) and a space at the very
first of your Subject line. For example:
Subject: ADULT: Shall We Dance? (1/14)
I included 'Subject:' as an example. Different mailers may call
it different things. It is simply the title of your posts. You
shouldn't put 'Subject:' in the title of your posts.
NOTE: Posts that fall under the scope of more than one TOPIC -
You can mark a post with more than one topic. Everything before
the colon (after 'Re:' have been discarded) is evaluated for
possible topics so you can specify more than one topic by
separating the topics by a comma. Here's an example of a multiple
TOPIC post:
Subject: ADULT,XOVER: Laser Swords, Lies, and Cheap Thrills
9. Formatting suggestions
These are suggestions to help make your stories more readable.
These are NOT rules. Most of these suggestions are applicable
to any type of post to any electronic mailing list or newsgroup.
They are included here because the problems caused by poor
formatting are compounded in a story type post where you want the
reader to closely follow what you're saying instead of merely
scanning over it.
One of the most important things to remember in this electronic
media is you _must_ pay close attention to making your stories
readable. The following suggestions should help.
(a) Don't use special characters.
Please don't use special characters such as combining regular
characters with umlaut/dieresis, circumflex, grave, acute
accents, right and left double-quotes. Only use ASCII
characters! If your mail program is MIME-capable it will
translate your posts to ASCII with control characters which are
very difficult to read with a mail program that is not
MIME-capable. IF you are using Microsoft Mail, turn you MIME
option OFF before posting.
(b) Single space everything!!
Double spaced text is extremely difficult to read on a computer
screen, and can unnecessarily cost readers money for various
reasons (charges for mail based on size, printer charges, etc.).
Leave a blank line between paragraphs, but within paragraphs,
please single space!
(c) Left justify everything!
Like double spaced text, fully justified text is very difficult to
read on a computer screen.
(d) Don't hyphenate words to break a too-long line.
As with double spacing and full justification, hyphenated words are
much more difficult to read on a computer screen than on paper. If
you have a long word that won't fit on the line, just let that line
be short, and take the word to the next line.
This also applies to e-mail addresses. If an address is too long
to fit on one line, it's somewhat common to split it at a ., but
it's really preferable put the whole thing on a new line.
(e) Limit your Line length
Ideally, each line of text should be NO MORE THAN 72 characters.
It makes things much easier to read and the lines don't break
funny (full line, one word, full line, two words) when your story
hits our mailbox. Also, MIME-capable mailers will translate your
post into a message with equal signs (=) or (=20) at the end of
all the too line lines. It makes a very ugly mess on this end.
Not to mention (again) that shorter lines makes your prose
much,much more readable. Our eyes are trained to be comfortable
with white space, look at the borders on a page in a book. The
more readable your story appears then it will be less likely
that someone will put it down before you (the author) has
managed to capture another victim, Er, reader.
Be particularly careful if you type a story in a PC or MAC word
processor (such as MS-Word) and upload it for posting. If not
saved properly, your paragraphs may be saved as single lines,
causing the over 80 characters per line problem in a big way.
'Textedit', the default editor on Suns is -notorious- for not
putting hard returns at the end of lines. You -must- put them in
yourself.
(f) the TAB key
Avoid the TAB key. Different systems treat tab characters
differently, which can cause very strange, and undesirable, results
on different computers. If you want to indent or center something,
use spaces instead of tabs.
Many people avoid this problem entirely by not indenting anything.
(g) Quotes
To indicate that a character is thinking something, rather than
speaking, you might want to consider using something other than
standard double-quotes ("). Many people use single-quotes ('),
asterisks (*), or angle brackets (<> or ><).
(h) New speakers
There is an extremely important, but often ignored, grammatical
rule that whenever a different person starts speaking (or thinking)
something, you start a new paragraph.
(i) Check spelling & grammar
This one is pretty basic. Poor spelling and/or grammar makes
things very difficult to read and can alienate your audience.
Please, Please, if you have a spell-checker program USE it.
(j) Electronic writing conventions
Since we're using only letters, numbers, and the more basic special
characters to write things for the lists, certain conventions have
evolved to help get around that.
To emphasize a word that would normally be italicized, put
*asterisks* around it.
To indicate underlining, put an _underscore_ before and after the
word/phrase.
And, most importantly, don't yell unless you mean to. TYPING IN
ALL CAPS IS THE WRITTEN EQUIVALENT OF YELLING AND IS VERY ANNOYING,
AS WELL AS DIFFICULT TO READ.
*10. more LISTSERV commands
To Subscribe: send mail to LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the
following line in the body of the message (the Subject line is
ignored):
SUBSCRIBE HLFIC-L <your full name>
The Listserv software will automatically extract your email
address from the headers of the message.
After subscribing, you may find the following options useful:
To change your subscription options to stop receiving the list of a
period of time (i.e. for a vacation or finals week): send mail to
LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the following line in the body of the
message (the Subject line is ignored):
SET HLFIC-L NOMAIL
To change (or to reset) your subscription options to receive the list
as separate email messages (default): send mail to
LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the following line in the body of the
message (the Subject line is ignored):
SET HLFIC-L MAIL
To change your subscription options to receive the list in a daily
digest: send mail to LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the following
line in the body of the message (the Subject line is ignored):
SET HLFIC-L DIGests
If your mailer does not provide the mailing address of the person who
send a post (usually PC and Mac mailers) you might want to change your
subscription option to get the headers also placed in the body of the
message. To do this: send mail to LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the
following line in the body of the message (the Subject line is
ignored):
SET HLFIC-L DUALhdr
Be careful and edit these headers out of any reply because they may
cause problems when you try to post the reply (the LISTSERV software
may fail to post your message).
To Unsubscribe: send mail to LISTSERV@LISTS.psu.edu with only the
following line in the body of the message (the Subject line is
ignored):
SIGNOFF HLFIC-L
Note: DO NOT send mail to HLFIC-L@LISTS.psu.edu to unsubscribe.
It may seem that your SIGNOFF didn't take effect because you are still
getting posts. There is probably a backlog of messages in HLFIC-L's
queue that were posted before you sent the SIGNOFF command. Those will
continue to come until it gets to the timestamp when you unsubscribed.
This can take several hours or might even take up to 24 depending on
how backed up everything is.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Debbie Douglass
(list owner)