There are a few invariable consequences of any action taken by a
list moderator to nudge traffic towards the list's target. One is
that some people will leave the list either because they realize
that it is not quite what they had initially expected or because
they are not prepared to stand for any restrictions being imposed
on their ability to use a list as they personally see fit. The
reason list owners know this is that a second consequence of any
public action will be a flurry of off-list communications both
registering complaints and asking for manual assistance with the
very things that automatic distribution lists are designed to
provide, in the first place.

Many list owners, myself included, simply don't have the time to
respond to very much such communication. Nor do we have time to
respond individually to the contributors of off-target messages
that might therefore not be forwarded to the list.

The most dire of all risks is that of messages from a list owner
triggering what is termed "meta-discussion" -- discussion about
the list, itself, rather than about any of the topics that the
list is intended to address. I realize that I am falling straight
into this very trap by posting the present message but do feel it
reasonable to respond here to a few of the questions repeatedly
posed to me in recent off-list communications.

If you're not entirely certain about the mandated purpose of
ICOM-L you should send the request:

     INFO ICOM-L

to

     [log in to unmask]

If this reveals list membership to be of little interest to you,
you can bail out by sending the command:

     UNSUB ICOM-L

to the same address.

If you have a broader interest in the discussion of topics
relating to museums but which lie outside the scope of ICOM's
specific organizational concerns, you should join MUSEUM-L by
sending the command:

     SUBSCRIBE MUSEUM-L Yourfirstname Yourlastname

also to that address.

If you have any sort of professional involvement in designing
museum network facilities I would urge you to join and
participate in MUSWEB-L. There are a few hoops to be jumped
through to become a member and the process can be initiated by
sending the following request:

     INFO MUSWEB-L

to

     [log in to unmask]

If you send these requests to me or to ICOM-L they will be
automatically discarded, so please pay attention to the way they
are addressed. If you still run inte trouble, you should send the
command HELP to either of the LISTSERV addresses.

The archives of all three lists are available via Web gateways
and you need not be a member of any of them in order to follow
their discussion:

http://home.ease.lsoft.com/Archives/icom-l.html
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/Archives/museum-l.html
http://listserv.nrm.se/archives/musweb-l.html

This having been said, you may expect a bit more more rigorous
administrative action in keeping ICOM-L on target.

 --
Cary Karp               Department of Information Technology
mailto:[log in to unmask]        Swedish Museum of Natural History
http://ck.nrm.se/       Svante Arrheniusv. 3
Phone: +46 8 666 4055   Box 50007
Fax:   +46 8 666 4235   104 05 Stockholm, Sweden