By Glenn "Carnage" Berry (Station Analysis List Admin)
Station Analysis is a mailing list dedicated to the discussion of the role playing game SLA Industries (pronounced SLAY not SLAH). The list is hosted by a company called Topica, their website is here.
There are really two ways to be subscribed to a topica mailing list one way is to just send an e-mail to station-analysis-subscribe@topica.com, this will subscribe you to the list and you will receive mailings as per any other subscriber. You will, however, be unable to view the archives or use any of the other funky topica facilities.
The second, and in my view preferable, option is to register with Topica and obtain a login to their site. You will then be able to subscribe by sending a mail to station-analysis-subscribe@topica.com, or by navigating to http://www.topica.com/lists/station-analysis and clicking on subscribe to this list, you will now have access to the archives and there's some jolly decent stuff in there.
List Traffic
Okay now when some people subscribe to the list they don't read things like this paragraph, "It's a mailing list how hard can it be?" Well the list generates traffic of up to 100 mails a night, if you don't think that your facilities can cope with this, or your delete key is insufficient then you have three options:-
Subscribe using the digest option
Subscribe using the Web Mail/Web Read option
Get someone else to subscribe for you and pester them for details
This is further complicated by the fact that the first two options are available only to members of topica.
On Topic/Off Topic/?
This list has been around in a number of incarnations since the dawn of time, oh alright since the game was bought by WoTC which is still quite a while. As with all mailing lists it's gone through a number of stages in it's life cycle and it's now in the "We're all mates, well all except him in the corner over there, and we'll talk about what the hell we like." Whilst this sounds horrific it's actually the good stage of a list, it's where you talk about the game but the talk then spins off in a direction completely out of control. I very rarely have to rein it in and sometimes it's fascinating.
Topica as Timelord
If you're the kind of guy who likes his e-mails in the order they were sent everytime all the time [Hi Ed :-)] then Topica is likely to be a bit disappointing, the mails can get mixed up and sent out of order, it doesn't happen to me all the time, but some people moan about it incessantly. [You know who you are!]
Topica as Caring Supplier
Topica like to perform regular maintenance on the mailling list servers, this is a good thing, they just neglect to mention it to their list administrators, this is a bad thing. What it really means is that sometimes you'll hear nothing from the list and then all of a sudden there'll be a flood of out of sequence mails as the servers try to process the queued messages, a lot of which go something like this:-
Topica as Saatchi & Saatchi
The e-mails you will receive will probably have some advertising on them sometimes the top and sometimes the bottom, this is the price we pay for a free mailing list service.
Topica as Omniscient being
Right because Techies are a strange bunch, sometimes your system administrators will have a number of domains that they can send and receive e-mails with, so far so good, however they will tell you that your e-mail address is something like, oh how about j.fullerton@ex.ac.uk and whilst e-mails will get to you if they're sent to that address, when you send e-mails they're actually sent using j.fullerton@exeter.ac.uk as an address. This is fine as it stands and real people will have no trouble sending you e-mails but Topica will get in a real mix up, you'll send messages that will bounce because you're not subscribed and receive messages from the list or you'll be able to send messages to the list but will receive nothing back, if you get problems like this contact me and I'll try to sort it out for you.
Topica as...
A number of issues have occurred since we moved from majordomo.net none of which have been really serious they've just been annoying and niggardly, if you get any problems please do not hesitate to e-mail me at J.Full^H^H^H^H^H sorry I mean Glenn Berry
Payment
None of the people who bring this list to you makes any money, with the notable exception of Topica who are a business and fully justified in making money off of it. There is a payment scheme based on the adverts in the e-mails but it gets used to promote the list to other users, or rather it will when there's enough cash in it.
Nightfall Crew
There are a number of people on this list who are current members of Nightfall Ltd, these people are on the list because they are fans of the game, not as official arbiters of all things SLA, they will sometimes make an official pronouncement or clarify the way things are in Canon WoP. It is best if any questions are asked on the list in general. There are a number of people on this list who were previously members of Nightfall. Again it is best to ask more general questions on the list rather than pestering the individual unnecessarily.
Flaming
Sometimes tempers get frayed and people start to abuse each other using the list as a medium, there's only so much of it I will put up with before I step in and pull the plug on both parties. [You have been warned!]
Democratic Process
This is not a democracy, [Democracy doesn't work!] however sometimes I will put stuff to the list, this is not really voting, look upon it as an opinion poll, don't expect to get something you want by suggesting it and then calling for a vote.
Snippage
Please Snip all the gubbins and irrelevant stuff from your replies, it can triple the size of the message without adding a jot of value.
Netiquette
Section 8.0 has more information about Net-Etiquette.
The Sin Bin is Glenn's list of email addresses that are temporarily banned from the Station Analysis list. Normally this is because the email account has problems, which in turn cause emails to and from Station Analysis to bounce. To prevent everyone on the list receiving the error messages from this, Glenn stops the account from receiving or sending emails from Station Analysis using ebb abilities that only high level Administrators know about. So that people have a warning that their account has been deactivated, he also maintains a list of these sin-binned emails on his website. Those people on the sin bin list can then contact Glenn to find out what their account problems are, so that they can fix them and regain access to the list.
If you are temporarily unsubscribing - for example going on holiday- the best bet is to use the Web Mail/Web Read option at topica.
However, if you are leaving us for good there are 3 options:
Selecting unsubscribe option from the topica website.
Sending a mail from the address you are subscribed at to station-analysis-unsubscribe@topica.com
Sending a email from any other address to majordomo@topica.com with "unsubscribe station-analysis [The email address you want to remove]" in the body.