paleonet PaleoNet Update

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A bit of an update on PaleoNet. I've recently updated the 'Jobs', and 
'Meetings' sections and added a few new scans of Janice Perta's 
illustrations to her 'A Glimpse of the Past' exhibition in The PaleoNet 
Gallery. I'm planning to undertake a major overhaul and update of the 
entire PaleoNet web site in the next few months, so if you have links, 
illustrations, or other materials you'd like featured, please contact 
me (offline). Also, if you have suggestions as to how the web site 
could better serve your needs, please let me know.

Over on the listserver side, everything seems to be working fine just 
now. Many thanks to Chris Sleep at the NHM for minding the technical 
side of PaleoNet listserver operations. Most of the 'Help' calls I get 
have to do with subsccription, unsubscription, and posting problems. If 
you have any questions about these, or if you are experiencing any 
problems, please consult the PaleoNet listserver User's Guide, which is 
available at:

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/paleonet/Listservers/PaleoNet.Html

and

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/Paleonet//Listservers/PaleoNet.Html

With respect to the latter issue, the overwhelming majority of posting 
problems stem from people changing their e-mail address—or local system 
administrator's changing people's e-mail address—without first 
unsubscribing their old address and subscribing their new address on 
PaleoNet. PaleoNet is not a moderated list, but it does require that 
users subscribe their current e-mail address. If you send a message to 
PaleoNet, the listserver software tries to match your return address to 
an address on the PaleoNet master list. If you're incoming message is 
matched to a subscriber's address, the software will re-route your 
message to the entire list. If not—because your address has changed 
since you subscribed to PaleoNet—your message will be blocked.

If it was just a case of the flow of PaleoNet messages suddenly being 
cut off, the 'change of address' problem wouldn't be as much of a 
problem as it is. However, life isn't that simple. In order to maintain 
continuity with e-mail coming to the user's old address, most system 
administrators make the old address an alias of the new address at the 
time of the change. This means that users will continuing receiving 
messages sent to the old address—including PaleoNet messages. Because 
the PaleoNet master list, of course, has no way of knowing about the 
local change, however, if a subscriber with a changed address attempts 
to post a message to PaleoNet, he/she will not be recognized as a 
subscriber by the list software and their message will be blocked. They 
then (usually) contact me asking why their posting privileges have been 
cancelled!

If you'd like to view the PaleoNet master list to confirm your e-mail 
address, the list (as of 1 May) I've placed a copy of all non-concealed 
addresses at the following url.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/paleonet/subscribers.htm

Of course, subscribers can always access the current list by sending 
the appropriate command (who paleonet) to the listserver commands 
address (PaleoNet-Request@nhm.ac.uk), provided your current e-mail 
address is on the master list.

As always, if you have any questions about your subscription please 
contact me. Also (as always), thank you for your support of PaleoNet.


________________________________________________________________
Dr. Norman MacLeod
Keeper of Palaeontology
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

(0)20-7942-5204 (Office)
(0)20-7942-5546 (Fax)
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (e-mail)

Web Page: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/palaeontology/a&ss/nm/nm.html
NHM Palaeo. Dept. BURP Update: 
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/palaeontology/burp.html
________________________________________________________________