Who can subscribe to CTY-L?
The CTY/OTID mailing list is intended for the use of the CTY community. The CTY community, broadly construed, includes current, former, and future students and staff, as well as parents and friends. Anyone can subscribe.

Who runs CTY-L?
CTY-L is based at Cornell University and administered, on a volunteer basis, by me. CTY and the Johns Hopkins University have no administrative involvement with CTY-L and assume no responsibility for its content.

How do I subscribe?
Send mail to lyris@cornell.edu with the following text (and nothing else) in the body of the message:
join CTY-L "Name"
where Name is your name, or the name by which you want to be known. Include the quotation marks.

How do I cancel my subscription?
Send mail to lyris@cornell.edu with the following text (and nothing else) in the body of the message:
leave CTY-L
Be sure to send this mail from the same address from which you subscribed.

How do I send mail to all the subscribers?
Send it to CTY-L@cornell.edu. If you're asking a question or starting a discussion, first search the archive to make sure that your question hasn't already been answered or that your point hasn't already been made.

My mail to CTY-L was returned to me with a notice saying that I'm not subscribed to CTY-L, even though I am a subscriber!
This is because you sent the mail from an address different than the one in CTY-L's subscribers file. This sometimes happens to people who have logins on several machines within a domain, and whose mailers don't automatically remove the machine name from the "From" address. For instance, if you subscribe as ctyer@college.edu and then try to send mail from ctyer@mycomputer.college.edu, your mail will be returned. The easiest way to prevent this is to send your mail from the address at which you're subscribed. If you absolutely need to be able to send mail from an address that differs from the one at which you receive mail, send a message to owner-CTY-L@cornell.edu that notes all the addresses in question. Please try to avoid making such requests, though, because handling them takes up time, and I'm already too busy.

I like CTY-L, but it produces too many pieces of mail. How can I keep receiving CTY-L without my mailbox exploding?
Send mail to lyris@cornell.edu with the following text (and nothing else) in the body of the message:
set CTY-L digest
Be sure to send this mail from the same address from which you subscribed. You'll now receive CTY-L in the form of a single mailing each day (except if there's no traffic on CTY-L on a particular day, in which case you won't receive anything on that day). Do not set DIGEST mode if your site restricts the length of incoming messages; during periods of high traffic the lengths of digests may exceed the maximum allowed on your system. (juno.com, for instance, has an absurdly low limit on message length.)

I'm going to be away from my mail for more than a few days. How do I keep my mailbox from exploding while I'm gone?
To suspend temporarily delivery of CTY-L, send mail to lyris@cornell.edu with the following text (and nothing else) in the body of the message:
set CTY-L nomail
Be sure to send this mail from the same address from which you subscribed. Please be sure to do this if your site has disc quotas or other restrictions on the amount of mail in your in-box. Otherwise all your incoming CTY-L mail will be bounced back to me, and then my mailbox will explode. (aol.com is particularly nasty with quotas.)

I set nomail but now I'm back and I want to start receiving CTY-L again. What do I do?
Send set CTY-L mail or set CTY-L digest, depending on whether you receive CTY-L as separate messages or as a daily digest.

I missed some mail. How do I find out what's been sent to CTY-L during the past few days?
Click here.

I know my way around computing systems and want to set parameters of my CTY-L subscription that aren't mentioned in this document. How can I find out more?
For a more complete list of Lyris ListManager commands, see the Lyris ListManager user reference.

Please use this mailing list responsibly. Just as is done when you're on a CTY campus, be considerate of differences in backgrounds and opinions.

• Avoid provoking or prolonging flame wars (heated, ad hominem arguments that clog everyone's mailbox), no matter who may have started them. The best strategy for dealing with flames, whether directed against yourself or against someone else, is to ignore them. If you find it necessary to respond to a flame, please direct your response to the individual flamer, not to CTY-L.

• If a discussion evolves into a topic that probably won't interest most other subscribers, use private email to continue your discussion instead of sending it to everyone on the list.

• When replying to some previous message, don't quote or reiterate too much of what's already been said. Many subscribers with low bandwidths (or low tolerances) do not want to see the same old message coming down their links a second time. In particular, make sure that your mail software does not automatically quote the entire message to which you are replying.

• If you're considering posting about a topic or a question that's likely to have been discussed on CTY-L in the past (for example college applications, curricula for gifted classes, emotional troubles), search the archive before posting a new message. The archive is available from the Web page mentioned at the beginning of this document. This way we can avoid repeating previously posted information, and keep the volume manageable for all subscribers.

• Rather than posting several short messages in a row, condense what you have to say into a single, longer message.

• Do not send or forward chain letters to the mailing list. A chain letter is, by definition, any piece of mail that asks that its recipients forward it indiscriminately. Even if the chain letter appeals to a good cause, it's likely a hoax. (For instance, one recent chain letter made the false claim that money would be donated to cancer research for every person who forwarded the letter.) Furthermore, even if you know that the cause of the chain letter is legitimate, there are other ways to convey the information that it contains - you might post it on Usenet, or post it on a Web page and give people the URL.

• Do not falsify your return address or otherwise attempt to impersonate someone else.

• When you see other people ignoring these guidelines, feel free to send the a gentle reminder via private email, but please continue to observe these guidelines yourself.

• Have a good time.