What Is FOF-CNY?

The Central New York Friends of Folk (FOF-CNY) is an unmoderated listserv-based discussion group devoted to discussions on folk music -- both traditional and contemporary. Its email address is FOF-CNY@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU (not case sensitive).

The listserv itself was set up to aid in discussions pertaining to the promotion of folk music artists, venues, and event calendars. Dana Cooke is providing a website to collect and organize these activities at URL: http://www.folkus.org/fof/.

The purpose for this website is solely to act as an aid to subscribing, configuring mail settings, and reviewing other pertinent listserv-related commands for the FOF-CNY discussion group. Due to local restrictions on disk storage space, it does not have archiving or database capabilities.

The FOF-CNY listowner is: Tom Keays / Contact Me . Contact him if you have trouble with your subscription. Be sure to describe the problem completely, including what you've done so far.

What is a Listserv?

Listservs are a form of Internet mailing list (sometimes called discussion lists). They are exactly that: lists of people who have signed up to receive email related to a given topic.

Just as a person can forward to another user email that he or she receives, a mailing list (list for short), is a special Internet email address that automatically forwards every email message it receives to everybody on the list. People with something to contribute or a question to ask send email to the list, and with hours or minutes, everyone on the list receives a copy of that message.

FOF-CNY (or more properly FOF-CNY@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU) is the address you use to send an email message to everybody who has joined the list.

But how do you join the list?

To join a mailing list, you first have to subscribe. Since the job of processing new subscriptions is handled by a computer, joiners must phrase the request to subscribe in a special word order so that the computer recognizes it as a request to join.

Think of the computer as a subscription agent: you want to join the FOF-CNY mailing list, but you have to subscribe through an agent that adds your email address to the list.

That agent is the listserv (or more properly LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU). Requests to subscribe or unsubscribe are handled by the listserv computer. (See the next section Subscribing to FOF-CNY for more complete directions.)

Subscribing to FOF-CNY

No restrictions are made to limit membership on the FOF-CNY listserv. But before you can send or receive mail, you must first have subscribed to the list. This is done by sending email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with a line of text following this format:
subscribe fof-cny Your-Name

For example:
subscribe fof-cny Woody Guthrie

For security reasons, to prevent bogus subscriptions on the list, you will be sent an email to confirm your subscription. A confirmation number will be coded in the "Subject:" field. All you have to do is reply to that email within 48 hours. Include the single line of text: ok

It is not necessary to quote the text of the original message, but leave the "Subject:" field intact.

Sending Mail To FOF-CNY

To send mail to all the other subscribers on the FOF-CNY list, address it to
FOF-CNY@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU (not LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU, ok?).

It is considered good form to include a "Subject:" field since most mail programs display that information if it is available. It is also processed in the digest format.

Please take care in replying to FOF-CNY mail. For some reason, the default "Reply to:" field is "FOF-CNY-REQUEST@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU". This is simply an alias for the list owner. He will not want to receive your posting and will more than likely discard it. If you want the FOF-CNY listserv to receive it, be sure to reply to the address in the "From:" field, "FOF-CNY@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU".

Signing Off FOF-CNY

To unsubscribe, send email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with a line of text saying
unsubscribe fof-cny

Requests to unsubscribe which are addressed to FOF-CNY@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU, will very likely be missed (the list owner tends to use the digested format and has bad reading habits).

Receiving Mail As A Digest

Subscribers of the FOF-CNY listserv can opt to receive it in the form of a daily digest. To do this, send email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with a line of text saying
set fof-cny digest

Set it back to the non-digest mail setting with the command:
set fof-cny mail

Turning Off the Listserv for Vacations

If you go away on a vacation, you may opt to turn your mail off temporarily rather than unsubscribing. This means you won't have to go through the extra confirmation step to re-subscribe. To do this, send email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with a line of text saying
set fof-cny nomail

You can set your mail back on with either of the following commands:
set fof-cny mail
or
set fof-cny digest

Changing Other Settings

Besides the mail | digest | nomail settings described in earlier sections, the listserv allows you change other settings.

By default, the listserv will not send you a copy of your own email when you post it to FOF-CNY. To "reproduce" a copy for yourself, send email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with the command:
set fof-cny repro

Return it to the default setting with the command:
set fof-cny norepro

You can hide your email address and name from other subscribers on the listserv with the command:
set fof-cny conceal

Return it to the default setting with the command:
set fof-cny noconceal

Checking Your Status

The listserv software allows you to see who is subscribed to the fof-cny list and also to check your own settings (i.e., are you set to receive mail, digests, nomail, etc.)

For a list of all the non-concealed subscribers, send email to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
with the command
rev fof-cny

To view your own mail settings, use the command
q fof-cny

You can issue multiple listserv commands in a single email as long as they each appear on separate lines.

If your mailing program appends a signature file onto your email, you might want to get into the habit of concluding lists of commands with a final command:
end
prior to the signature so that the listserv program will ignor it. This is also true for the "subscribe", "unsubscribe", and various "set fof-cny" commands described in earlier sections.