Belle and Sebastian Sinister Mailing List This is a list of questions for using the list. A list of frequently asked questions for Belle and Sebastian themselves can be found at the Jeepster Site at http://www.jeepster.co.uk/belleandsebastian/faq. I know this document is long but please take time to read it before you use the list. Ignorance is no defence, and you're expected to have read and agreed to these before posting - if not, you might encounter the BLACK HOLE OF SINISTER. And don't think I'm not aware, and slightly apologetic, about how long this is, but it's been reached at by agreement with the wishes of the majority of people who are on the list and have taken time to mail me about it. Finally, please always remember to check the Sinister WWW site regularly for list news: http://www.missprint.org/sinister Mailing List Frequently Asked Questions Index Preface A. What's Sinister? What connection has it with the record company? B. What happens if I don't bother reading this? C. Before you start: sending plain text messages to the list Using the list 1. How do I send messages, subscribe/unsubscribe from Sinister? 2. So I just send everything to "sinister@missprint.org", yeah? 3. I'm getting fed up with all these messages, can I get them all together sometime instead? 4. Can I tell who is on the list? 5. I can't get off the list - why not? 6. I'm on the list but I've stopped getting any emails - what's happened?? --OR-- My list messages stopped and I get keep getting silly ones about a list called "honey-bounces" - what's all this about? 7. I only just joined the list, can I see what's previously been sent? 8. Someone mentioned something on the list and I can't remember when or what they said - shall I ask again? 9. I need someone's email address from the list and I can't find it 10. When I send a reply to the list the address my mail program decides to send to if I don't change it is stupid! Why don't replies automatically go back to the list / the recipient only? List content and rules 11. OK so it's a music list then? 12. So what can we talk about on the list? 13. So why can't anyone out there send any old junk to the list? 14. Brilliant! I can advertise my new band/floor cleaner/hygiene product to everyone on the list now! 15. He/she's really winding me up, I'm going to slag them off something rotten... 16. What else do I have to remember? Hints 17. What is "Tigermilk" / what other recordings are there / who is in the band etc etc? 18. Can someone record me a CDR, MD, MP3 of Tigermilk or another B&S release? 19. I've found a shop selling CDR bootlegs... 20. Hey I've found out Belle and Sebastian are releasing a single / playing a gig and no-one's mentioned it yet, I'm going to tell everyone... About the list 21. Who provides this list? Who says I can't do what I want on it? 22. What has the list got to do with Jeepster, the record company? 23. Do the band read the list? 24. Why bother with all this? 25. What sort of presents can I send to Honey to show him I love him? Using the list A. What's Sinister? What connection has it with the record company? The Sinister list sprung fully-formed from the fiery backside of a list briefly set up on one of those WWW public services by the Belle and Sebastian "fan-club"; unfortunately these public lists don't work very well, so it was restarted on this server by me shortly after its birth. It's the original fully-flavoured and pedigree Belle and Sebastian mailing list, set up in 1997, with about a thousand members. It's a very special list - not a "resource for fans", but a community of people who love the music of Belle and Sebastian, and who usually love each other, often ending up in each others underwear too. It isn't for people who want quick one-shot answers to one-shot questions, or want to sell something, or want to show how cool they are (because I'm not), but is a safe hidey-hole for people who want somewhere they can contribute and receive thoughtful, imaginative and saucy thoughts about the band and everything that starts there and doesn't end up somewhere pointless. Although it isn't solely a news list, you will also get Belle and Sebastian news promptly, passed on from record company mails or the band themselves. The list is run from Scotland, so it's pretty close to home, and many of the members are friends of the band - the band sometimes mail and often read too. This is worth remembering when you're thinking of sending in scurrilous rumours, amused though the band are by all that too though sometimes. Please remember: although this list was originally called "the Official List" by Jeepster, it's entirely independent of the band and the record company - it's completely independent of all commercial concerns in fact, and is here for you. B. What happens if I don't bother reading this? The list has got too big and too hard to manage to tolerate people who want to show off, swap personal jokes with friends, use it as a forum to promote their ego, abuse others, or carry on blithely ignoring the rules below, which try to keep some sort of sanity for the many many people who receive every message. If it looks like you're blindly and deliberately ignoring the rules in this document over a long period of time, your mail might eventually stop getting passed through to the list unless you sharpen up. If you keep on offending you'll get kicked and banned. I'm afraid this has become necessary as the list has grown and nearly now become unmanageable, and is something called for very strongly by the majority of listees. But, listen, it'll only happen to people who've clearly ignored all this. Just please read ALL the rules before even thinking of posting. And don't grumble :) C. Before you start: sending plain text messages to the list Please read the document: http://www.missprint.org/sinister/plaintext.html before sending to the list, otherwise your messages might never get through. It's a set of checklists to ensure the mail program you are using doesn't send unreadable formatting information to the list. Using the list 1. How do I send messages, subscribe/unsubscribe from Sinister? There are two addresses you need to remember to use the list: sinister@missprint.org - this is the address to send messages to everyone on the list. Everything sent here goes to everyone - the list software makes a copy of your message and sends it on to everyone who is subscribed. You use this address everytime you want to mail information to the list, when you've been given the ability to post to it. majordomo@missprint.org - this is where you send mailing list requests i.e. subscribe/unsubscribes. Messages sent here don't go to the list but perform certain commands - they should be sent in the body of your message (i.e. first line) and not the subject line. There's not a person on the other end but a program which reads commands you send in your email and responds to them, so you need to type them exactly right. To subscribe to the list you need to send the following command: subscribe sinister and equally unsubscribe sinister to get off the list. It's important you understand the distinction between these two addresses. Once you've joined the list you have to wait a little while before you can send a post to it. This is to ensure that newcomers get a feel for list content, look through the archives and information on these WWW pages and soak up the list atmosphere before taking part. The list is sufficiently big now that this time in the nursery for new members is necessary to stop the list going wild with new requests and questions that have been asked many times before and can be easily answered by looking in the Archives or Searching. This may all seem a bit harsh but this list is very special, usually extremely friendly, welcoming and helpful, and most list members consider themselves part of a warm community, sometimes even with occasional trouser fumblings. I'd hate visitors to this page to see this as elitist - it's simply a way of introducing a warming-up period so that there's some continuity in the spirit of the list. If you want a nice place to stay on the Internet, it's worth the wait, and I daresay you'll appreciate this measure when you're a proper member. If you rejoin the list later having gained a voice before, you'll get it back straight away. The current period you have to sit in the nursery and play with bricks for before getting a voice to post is 2-3 weeks (the procedure to give you a voice runs every week or so). At that time you'll get a mail message telling you you have graduated and can now post. It's still very important that you've read through all the List Rules before taking part, as failure to follow them could result in your voice being permanently removed. If you ever get really stuck and you have read the rest of this page, then just send a personal message to honey@missprint.org This gets through to a person i.e. me and I can sort it out but I'll pull a face if you haven't tried everything suggested here. 2. So I just send everything to "sinister@missprint.org", yeah? No! Read again! Never send unsubscribe requests to the list itself (i.e. sinister@missprint.org) but always to majordomo@missprint.org!!! This is very important as you'll find people will want to throttle you if you send such messages to the list - it happens a lot and drives people mad. I may be able to put a block on these and chuck them away but I do not have the time to manual subscribe/unsubscribe people who get it wrong. 3. I'm getting fed up with all these messages, can I get them all together sometime instead? Yes, instead of subscribing to "sinister" you need to subscribe to "sinister-digest". This means you get a single mail of all messages to the list rather than each message individually as someone send it. Digests are sent out every now and again, probably about once a day but actually when the number of lines hits a certain threshold. Just follow the same rules as above, so just send the message: subscribe sinister-digest to: majordomo@missprint.org Note the hyphen above, many people leave it out and it matters! Remember if you are changing to the digest to unsubscribe from the standard list. 4. Can I tell who is on the list? Yes. The first way is to click on the links on the main WWW page under "Joining". Here you can see the full email addresses of people on the main list, the digest, and a breakdown of who on the list is from which countries. If you can't get to the WWW you can still get a list by email: just send the command who sinister to majordomo@missprint.org Equally you can get some info on the list be sending: info sinister but you'll probably just get the same as you're reading here. 5. I can't get off the list - why not? Don't mail me until you've read this or I'll get a bit grumpy. There are several reasons why it doesn't work when you expect it to: 1. You're not on "sinister" but the digest version which is actually a separate list called "sinister-digest". You need to send an "unsubscribe sinister-digest" command. 2. Your mail program is sending out your email address in a slightly different format than before (maybe you changed programs). First you should check your subscription address by finding it in the correct list, using the "who" command or looking at the list from the top WWW page as described above. If you see your address still on the list then try: unsubscribe sinister email-address There'll be a slight delay while this kind of request gets approved but it'll be a lot quicker than waiting for me to sort it out manually. 3. You're actually off the list but mail is still dribbling through - again check the subscriber list from the WWW or using the "who" command. If none of this works and you're sure you're still on the list, then mail me, but send me the error you get when you try and unsubscribe. I can't do much without this. 6. I'm on the list but I've stopped getting any emails - what's happened?? --OR-- My list messages stopped and I get keep getting silly ones about bouincing email - what's all this about? Often your service provider will have problems with its email setup and mail to you from the list will bounce back to me. I get many of these a day and after mail has bounced once or twice you will be taken off the Sinister list or digest and put on another list to warn you regularly. It keeps trying you until it gets through, i.e. your email is fixed and you can see the problem. The next thing to do is read the message! It will tell you what to do. You need to first take yourself off the bounce list (to stop getting the reminders). You do this by sending a mail to "owner-sinister@missprint.org" the text of which says just "unbounce". You then need add yourself back on the "sinister" or "sinister-digest" as if you are a new user. If you were on the main list then you would send the following to majordomo@missprint.org (not sinister@missprint.org!): subscribe sinister You should get confirmation back that this has worked. If your address is having delivery problems (i.e. the list can't get through to you) then it will be receiving errors - to see if it is for you, take a look at the list of the last 30 internet service providers to generate errors to see if your delivery address has problems: just look for the file that contains the name of your ISP (something that looks like your email address) and look inside to see if it mentions your own account as giving an error. If you have tried all the suggestions in this list, contact the list owner. But if you find an error message in this directory referring to your email, take a copy and shove it under the nose of your system administrator or service provider, asking them what's wrong. At any rate, if you stop getting list emails you should check you are still on the list by looking at the membership lists under Joining The List. You could also check that there is mail currently arriving by looking at the list archives. 7. I only just joined the list, can I see what's previously been sent? Yes there is an archive available on the WWW. Just click on "Archives" at the top of the main Sinister WWW page which is at: http://www.missprint.org/sinister This is the last page of the current month's archive of messages. Follow the links from that page to see any week's messages on the list, and there are links to see messages in date order etc. if you prefer. 8. Someone mentioned something on the list and I can't remember when or what they said - shall I ask again? Well have a look in the archives first so you don't get told that it's been answered before. Use the search facility on the WWW site - you can find it by going to the "Search" link at the top of the main Sinister page. You can search for any word or series of words by typing them in the box. There are lots of options to search for different things. 9. I need someone's email address from the list and I can't find it Use the "Search" above to look for their name in the archive. Don't ask the list or you'll be spanked. 10. When I send a reply to the list the address my mail program decides to send to if I don't change it is stupid! Why don't replies automatically go back to the list / the recipient only? The setting for this list is that a Reply-to field is not set. This means that for most mail programs replies will go back to the sender of the message rather than the list itself. This may or may not be the right behaviour for you, but is set as a most conservative and safest choice for the list. This is a fairly religious issue but here's a quick discussion why I have done it this way. Please digest users in particular remember that a reply to a message in the digest will not go to the list. It goes to "owner-sinister" which is a particular kind of black hole :) I get these sometimes and I'm afraid the list takes too much of my time to manual send stuff on. It'll get deleted very rapidly, so you'll just have to remember I'm afraid. The main reason is because it is generally seen as bad practice to do this,although it's quite widespread - see for instance http://www.unicom.com/FAQ/reply-to-harmful.html The reason for this isn't petty technical completeness but because it can cause very real problems - only in the last month my mailbox was filled with a thousand copies of the same error message caused by a badly constructed mail program at the receiving end by someone on the list - some of the bigger corporations just don't abide by standard Internet mailing rules and their programs send errors back to the Reply-To field, which go back to the list and via the list back to the offending machine and... you can imagine. For people picking up their mail via dial-up I can only imagine the nightmares this would cause. List content and rules 11. OK so it's a music list then? Well - sort of - but remember it's a list for People Who Listen To Belle And Sebastian and it's very existence is centred around that idea. There are plenty of much more general music lists (e.g. "indiepop") which will be better suited to someone who wants to talk for hours about a particular genre. These other lists have many more resources behind them and are there for just that. Of course we're all going to talk about music/books/wallpaper we like but there's a balance to be struck. It's actually quite a hard balance to find so the best thing to do is watch the list for a while and see what people like. 12. So what can we talk about on the list? Anything vaguely connected with the band or with life as a fan of Belle and Sebastian, is OK. The list is the place where you'll hear any real news about Belle and Sebastian first, but it is also a place where people will tell stories about what's happened to them, if they think they're funny or relevant. Try and remember this: it's a list for Belle and Sebastian but more importantly about the lives of People Who Listen To Belle And Sebastian. If you want a low-volume news-only list for the band then don't join. You will get a lot of mail that isn't about latest releases, gigs, appearances etc., but instead about ourselves. The list goes right when it's lively, funny, interesting, touching, and sometimes even useful. The list goes wrong when people post irrelevancies, not-so-funny "clever" quips, or long discussions take place which would be more suited to another list (like discussions of the relative merits of a band unrelated to B&S). I may step in if we get a long long conversation about something interesting to only a tiny minority of the list - some people pay handsomely for their email and would not be pleased to receive a thousand messages about an obscure band from Wigan who once sounded a bit like the intro to one of Belle and Sebastian's songs. If you do receive a mail from me which asks you to stop posting to the list on a particular subject, or in a particular way, please don't be offended - I am just trying to keep this list running ok - but please do something about it. I have seen too many lists die as a result of losing sight of what they are for and why people liked them in the first place, and don't want the same to happen here, if it can be avoided. Please try and be sensitive to the majority of listeners (about 1000 at the time of writing) and do not continue long threads on an unrelated subject - if you wish to divert widely from the issues related specifically to the band, then go to a more general list or pop along to www.liszt.com and join another list as well! Pet theories about whether Elvis is a cat or indeed a brussel sprout are however tolerated for a long time because they amuse your list administrator. 13. So why can't anyone out there send any old junk to the list? Because you can only send to the list if you are a member. Some people may be on the list, but try and send from another mail account somewhere else - normally this mail will bounce back to you with a message explaining why. Other people's mail programs send out the sender's email address in a different format from the address you subscribed with - unfortunately my computer doesn't know that and will again send back your email, explaining why and what to do. This restrictions to posting to the list has been added, to remove the possibility of unsolicited adverts, and more importantly, to promote a sense of community and inhibit one-off mailshots from people who haven't taken the time to absorb the list's content and try and fit in sensitively. This has been necessary as a lot of loyal list members have appealed to me to stop un-thought-out and careless emails from people who don't want to make an effort, and it's made the list very hard to read. I don't allow new members who read the WWW archives by choice, to post to the list I'm afraid, as it's just too easy to skip through one or two messages instead of committing yourself to be a member and therefore appreciate what a pain 40 pointless messages in a day can be in your mailbox. 14. Brilliant! I can advertise my new band/floor cleaner/hygiene product to everyone on the list now! Please please please don't abuse the list in this way. Anyone who consistently and unashamedly sends adverts to the list will be banned with no court of appeal. 15. He/she's really winding me up, I'm going to slag them off something rotten... DO NOT FLAME PEOPLE OR BE ABUSIVE! I take this very seriously and will act accordingly - too many mailing lists have been ruined by arrogance or a quick temper by people who consider themselves "real fans" - a rather pathetic term. This mailing list is setup for everyone, especially new enthusiastic listeners who do not need to be abused and belittled. Please be helpful and if you can't think of anything nice to say go and do a jigsaw. Anyone who is consistently a real pain will be permanently removed. I am a naive kitten and I don't like fights on my list and I'll stop them - there are plenty of angry lists to go to if you want. If anyone feels they are being unfairly mistreated or have any other problems with the list please mail me rather than the list. I will sort out any such problems offline. This of course doesn't mean you can't express strong feelings strongly - in fact it's mandatory. But don't attack people, attack things. 16. What else do I have to remember? Please read these and remember. If someone consistently ignores these you might get a bit of a growl and in extreme cases I'll stop people posting and kick people off if the happiness of the majority on the list demands it. * Don't use the list to sell stuff or you will get an angry note from me - this list must stay strictly non-commercial to ensure its future existence. * Don't send warnings about viruses to the list! You might be being friendly but 99.9% of these "virus warnings" are hoaxes - the only "virus" is the fact that you are passing it on, and everyone who knows will groan. If you see one of these and aren't sure then mail me and I will check for you. * Don't send lots of replies to separate messages on the list one after another. This doesn't seem to go down well. Proper behaviour is to hold back, read a few messages and bundle up your replies to them all in one big message for the day. If you're sending more than two messages a day, unless in exceptionaly circumstances where you have something very important to tell us all, then you're getting it wrong, and will probably hear from me. * If you are replying to someone, take the time to edit the bits you are quoting from their message carefully and just quote a few lines. If you can't be bothered editing the message you are replying to, don't bother sending - laziness on your own part equates to over 800 people having to page through stuff they've read before. If you are adding fewer lines than you are quoting it's probably not worth sending either. * Don't comment on what is or isn't a "good mail" to the list, and the nature of content on the list please: comments such as "you shouldn't have posted that, it's not on-topic" or "I think we should be able to talk about ... and it's none of your business to stop us". These kind of discussions about mailing lists on mailing lists are as old as the hills and go round and round - any attempt to "improve" list content inevitably results in an increasingly tedious well-trod path or "yes we can", "no you can't" and the list always gets worse. Mails about list content are not considered a valid subject for this list, and I will put a stop to such if I see them starting. The correct response if you see postings you don't like is: (a) mail the sender politely and with panache, explaining why, and/or (b) mail me and let me know. If I get a few comments on a particular thread on the list I will always act to make it work for the majority of people; plus it makes me feel wanted. * Don't send number games/quizzes/petitions/jokes to the list please. Put a bit of yourself into your posts. * If you really need some information on something that other people may not want to know, please make sure you remember to tell people not to mail back to the list, but to you personally. If you think others might be interested, say you will post a summary of the mails you received. And, erm, do it. * Don't use the list for private mail to 5 people you know. Please help my server stay unclogged so this list can survive. * Don't send lists of your favourite bands/films or anything to the list, and don't join in if someone else asks people to. This is the plague of mailing lists the world over: lists of "things I like" are usually completely useless the other end, and usually mean they want you to know how tasteful they are :) If you want to talk about bands you like, tell us why. * People will talk about a book or film or song or sandwich filling they love or hate. That's fine - but please don't just say "it's great" or "it's crap". Say why. Just because a lot of people tell me they get fed up with these. * Please don't send messages with attachments to the list. This may not be junk to you but there's still lots of people out there who don't use mail programs that know how to deal with anything but standard text. And please remember some of us use Unix etc. as a principle platform and so attachments in proprietary formats (like Microsoft Word) will just be plain unreadable. If anyone wants to share material that isn't in standard text format, or that's of significant size, that's fine - just send it to me and I will post it up on the WWW site. That way people get to choose to download it... * Don't fling any old message to the list or treat it like email to a few friends - it just doesn't translate on a massive scale and people will get irritated. Think before you send. The drill is: compose your message - hover your hand over the send button for 10 seconds - think: "would Cliff Richard send this?" - send. Hints 17. What is "Tigermilk" / what other recordings are there / who is in the band etc etc? This list of answers doesn't cover any of that - it's just guidelines for using the list itself. You can imagine that question like these get asked and answered all the time. There's a set of answers to questions like these on the record company site at: http://www.belleandsebastian.co.uk/faq/index.htm Please make sure you read these if you're new before posting your question. 18. Can someone record me a CDR, MD, MP3 of Tigermilk or another B&S release? Members of staff of Belle and Sebastian's record company Jeepster pop in and out of the list. They are a business and have stated their position many times: they are happy for people to exchange analogue tape copies of B&S recordings, including Tigermilk, but draw the line at anything in a digital format. This includes CDRs, minidisc recordings, and MP3 files on the Internet, and if they hear about people exchanging such formats, they often choose to contact the sender. So, just as a warning, if you go mentioning it on the list, you'll probably get a letter from them. People forget lists are public forums anyone can read. This is the position Jeepster take, in accordance with their own polices, and is a matter for them, too often discussed on the list: it just leads to acrimony and the whole debate on the list one more time. If you want to talk about the ethics of it, make sure you've read through everything anyone has said about it and have something startlingly new to say. Please also note that Jeepster's position is their own, not mine, and has nothing to do with the running of this list. It also doesn't mean I approve or disapprove of what they do. 19. I've found a shop selling CDR bootlegs... See above. If you tell people on the list, then Jeepster have been know to write them a nasty solicitor's letter. And remember that commercially produced bootlegs are usually poorly done, with no love for the music, and mean you're just giving more cash to some criminal who'll go off and spend it on Celine Dion LPs for his mum. Don't do it. 20. Hey I've found out Belle and Sebastian are releasing a single / playing a gig and no-one's mentioned it yet, I'm going to tell everyone... Well you may be right, but it's pretty likely you're not. There seems to be masses of people/shops out there who "know" about release dates/gigs before the band or record company do. To save everyone going out and booking plane tickets, I'd suggest you mail Jeepster to check before you post to the list. About the list 21. Who provides this list? Who says I can't do what I want on it? The resources to run this list are provided by me and it is not a guaranteed public service - I will do whatever is necessary to ensure its continued existence. If you want a completely unrestrained list where anyone can talk for weeks about anything, there are other lists which advertise themselves as unmoderated; or if you want a more constrained list that is moderated or band news only, then I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere too. Or indeed you can go off and make your own list: that's what the Internet's for. I'm hoping I can keep this list going on the resources I have - but if it impacted too much I might have to withdraw it one day. To ensure it continues therefore it isn't a public resource in quite the same way a newsgroup is. So please be nice, be aware of who you're sending messages too, remember the list rules, and be public-spirited. 22. What has the list got to do with Jeepster, the record company? Nothing formally at all. The list isn't here to promote Jeepster, or indeed the band really, and we don't have to say only nice things about either of them. Courtesy is required though. I'm making these points just to say that it's a separate, strictly non-commercial meeting place - if you want fan club or record company comment then go straight to Jeepster. 23. Do the band read the list? The answer is pretty much: yes, sporadically. The band have an office in Glasgow and a few members get Internet access elsewhere and they keep up with it on and off when it's interesting. Please don't let that inhibit anyone from saying anything - remember it's your list, not anyone elses. And don't expect an answer from the band to a query on the list - it's pretty unlikely. Mail them direct from the link to the band WWW pages on the Sinister top page. 24. Why bother with all this? Lists of frequently asked questions like this are usually formal and stuffy affairs so a personal note: I am a grumpy thirty-something who still refuses to listen to Eric Clapton or moan how good music was when he was 16 - it's hard though when we're surrounded by so much mediocrity, but we shouldn't kid ourselves it was any different 15 years ago. But when I heard Belle and Sebastian I jumped for joy at a band with genuine musical sense, charm, toughness and POPness. So this is still all about music. 25. What sort of presents can I send to Honey to show my love? A very good question - honey of course, rude postcards or silly little toys. _________________________________________________________________ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@missprint.org". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@missprint.org". WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+