The Global Medical Physics Mailing List Welcome Message
**[Please keep this message]**

   Welcome to the global Medical Physics Mailing List, where >2700
professional medical physicists and students in over 70 countries
communicate with each other.  This message will help you become oriented
quickly and give you useful commands to set the mail options the way you
want.  If you were placed on the list by mistake, please see the
UNSUBSCRIBE section at the end of this message.

   All medical physicists are invited to subscribe.  This list is *not*
affiliated with the AAPM or any other society in any way, although the
majority of subscribers are AAPM members.  Occasionally there are dozens
of posts per day.  Please be sure that what you have to
contribute is worthy of being placed in >2700 email boxes.  The list is
professional and noncommercial and is >>99% free of ads or "spam."  The
listowners are quick to suspend the posting privelege of those who violate
the no-spam rule.  All posts are, or should be, of an informative nature
and  related to medical physics.  The list is usually unmoderated, so your 
posts are sent as soon as they are received without review by moderators.
   Because of the large number of subscribers there can be alot of email,
consequently
**new subscriptions are defaulted to digest mode.**

   This results in your receiving only one email a day with all the day's
posts included (or attached as a text file if there are too many lines for
a regular email message).  See DIGEST below if you wish to toggle
 between digests and receiving each message as it is posted.

   There are only a few basic rules:
  - No wanton advertising ("spam") is permitted.  This is an academic
forum.  You may refer to a commercial web page, product or service as an answer to
a specific question placed on the list, but posting unsolicited ads, even
ones veiled as informative, will cause you to lose posting privileges.
  - Each member is limited to two posts per day.  That is rarely tested.
  - Total posts per day by all members may not exceed 50. This, too, is
rarely tested.
  - File attachments are not permitted to prevent virus spread.  (The daily
digest may arrive as a text file if it is too long for your email client.)
There is presently no way to prevent files from being passed through the listserver,
so use the usual care when opening any files that do pass through.  Usually
these are signature files and company logos.

   Please use simple *unformatted text* for posting as there is a wide
range of email clients in use by subscribers and formatting characters often
appear as ASCII text within the message if you post from certain clients.
   Also, please do not use the GLOBAL Medical Physics Mailing List to announce
LOCAL or REGIONAL meetings.  There are other mailing lists for that purpose.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADDRESSES:
   There are three email addresses you need to know (and not confuse).
Please note that "@cwis-1.wayne.edu" can replace "@lists.wayne.edu" in all
addresses.  They are interchangeable.  Please use "lists" and not "cwis-1" in
all addresses in case our list is ever moved from fileserver #1.  
"Lists" always forwards to the present server for this list.

   The first address is for POSTING messages to the list, i.e., to ALL
subscribers.  That address is MEDPHYS@lists.wayne.edu.  Please make sure
you want *everyone* to receive your message before using this address.

   The second address is for LISTSERVER (subscription) COMMANDS.  The
listserver uses Listserv software and thus has a different command
structure from Majordomo, Mailbase, or other mail servers with which you may be
familiar.  The listserver resides at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, USA,
and is a donated resource of that university.  Keeping bandwidth to a
reasonable level allows us to use the listserver at no cost.  You
communicate directly with the listserver to change your options, 
request generic help, to sign off the
list, etc.  That address is LISTSERV@lists.wayne.edu.  As the listserver
serves more than just our list, you must identify the listname when you
send a command.  The term "medphys" must be included in almost all commands
pertaining to your subscription.  Generic commands such as "help" do not
need to identify the specific list.  ALL commands below are sent to the
LISTSERV address.

  The third address is for communicating with the LISTOWNERS.  That address
is
medphys-REQUEST@lists.wayne.edu
  The listowners can often solve
subscription problems when you cannot.  You should seldom, if ever, need to
use this address.  The listowners (currently Raj Mitra and Carter Schroy)
are volunteers and do not "own" the list; they just try to reduce the anarchy
and, as such, may make unpopular decisions about list procedures on rare
occasion.  No one actually owns the list.

  Please note that email addresses, not people, are subscribed to the list.
You can only post to the list from a subscribed address.  If your employer
changes your node name, say from "notes.univ.edu" to just "univ.edu", the
listserver will no longer recognize the address as being subscribed and
reject your posts.  Contact the listowners in that event.

SUBSCRIPTION OPTIONS:
   There are a number of subscription options and can be easily handled either
from the list's website at

http://lists.wayne.edu/archives/medphys.html

or by sending email commands directly to the listserver (listserv@lists.wayne.edu)

   Too much email from the list?  Try the DIGEST format.  It is for those who wish to
receive only one email per day (a "digest") with all of the day's posts.
The alternative is to receive each message as it is posted, which
can often be 20-50 separate emails per day.  To receive mail in digest form
(the default option when you first subscribe), the command is
set medphys digest.
  To undo the digest format, the command is
set medphys nodigest.

   MIME COMPLIANCE
If your email client is mime compliant and you prefer to receive mime-encoded
mail, you may send the command
set medphys mime
 to the listserver.  The command to undo this is
set medphys nomime.

   To TEMPORARILY SIGN OFF the list (as for vacation or meetings) and to
receive no mail at all, the command is
set medphys nomail.
  To receive mail again, use
set medphys mail.
   The difference between "nomail" and the "signoff" command (below) is that 
your subscription options are maintained when you sign back on.  If you signoff
and then resubscribe you will receive the default subscription options.

   To UNSUBSCRIBE from the list, the command is
signoff medphys
   To RESUBSCRIBE, use
subscribe medphys firstname lastname
where your name has no degrees, certifications, rank, etc., appended.

   For a generic list of Listserv options, send the command
help to the LISTSERV address.
   And, again, subscription options are also available by clicking on
various radio buttons on the list's webpage.

   A partial list of other mailing lists that may interest medical physicists
appears on http://aapm.org/medphys/.

   If you have any questions, please address them to
 medphys-request@lists.wayne.edu
   Thank You,
   The Medical Physics Listowners

[rev 1 April 2001]