| Message-ID: <20221206210429.48944140406@telecomdigest.us>
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2022 21:04:29 +0000 (UTC)
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: Updated Telecom Digest Frequently Asked Questions List
[ Text converted from HTML ]
Frequently Asked Questions for The Telecom Digest
http://telecom-digest.org/faq.html
Last Update – December 5, 2022
This is the list of frequently-asked questions for The Telecom Digest,
and it is sent to new subscribers automatically. It is also posted in the
Digest whenever there's a major change.
Q. What is The Telecom Digest?
A. The Telecom Digest is the oldest continuously published mailing list
on the Internet. It was started before Usenet existed, but is now
available via the Usenet group comp.dcom.telecom, or via an email
subscription.
Q. Who's in charge?
A. The current Moderator is Bill Horne, and you may reach him by sending
email to telecomdigestsubmissions atsign telecom-digest.org
Q. How do I subscribe?
A. If you want to receive The Telecom Digest via email, send a "plain
text" email message to sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org, with the command
"subscribe telecom" in the subject line, followed by the "quit" command
in the message body, so you don't have to worry about any signature or
other automatically-added content, which might confuse the SYMPA robot.
You may choose to receive posts in a daily digest, with all the posts for
the day included in a single email, or you may choose to have each post
sent to your email address as soon as it is approved: the “digest plain
text” option is the default, but if you prefer to get the “individual
emails” or the "digest MIME" version or a “summary” version in
your email, wait until your subscription has been confirmed, and then
send a new email to sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org, with the command
"help" in the subject of the message, followed by the "quit" command on
the first line of the message body. You'll receive a help message, which
will tell you what other options are available.
Q. Which option is best?
A. Each option has advantages and disadvantages, and they're too numerous
to list here. The best way to decide which is best for you is to switch
your subscription through the various choices, and use each option for a
week or so to get a feel for what works for you, e.g. those whom use a
cellphone to read emails may prefer the “summary” version, which list
only the subject lines of the day’s posts, so that they can quickly scan
the current subjects and get an idea of which ones they'll read online at
home later on.
If you want to subscribe an address OTHER THAN the one you are sending
the subscription request from, then you need to send an email to the
moderator, and include details of the request. To prevent “Joe jobs”, you
must include your legal name and current postal address, and a current
telephone number where you can be reached directly. Any email sent from
an address which is obfuscated, incorrect, or which goes to a
challenge-response system will be ignored.
You may also receive and post to The Telecom Digest via the Usenet group
comp.dcom.telecom, either using a newsreader program such as "pine" (on
Unix), or "Thunderbird" (on Windows), or through portals such as Google.
Q. What topics does The Telecom Digest cover?
A. The Telecom Digest is primarily, but not exclusively, focused on the
world's telephone systems, networks, and companies. Our readers talk
about regulations, technical matters, rates, numbering plans, tariffs,
the prices charged for various services, alternatives to the traditional
telephone network (such as VoIP), and related issues.
Q. What do I do if I want to talk about something else?
A. The Internet is a big place: it's impossible to list all the
telecommunications-related groups available on Google and Usenet in this
FAQ. If you're looking for a place to talk about two-way radios or ship's
blinker lights or surplus military gear, the best way to go about finding
a mailing list, group, or website for your interest is to do a Google
search for the specific equipment you're looking for, and backtrack from
that to the places where others who are interested in it hang out.
Q. How do I get something published in The Telecom Digest?
A. There are three ways to contribute original posts or to reply to posts
made by others. ALL POSTS ARE SENT TO THE SAME INBOX and are evaluated by
the same rules, so there's no need to worry about which one you use.
Choose from these ways:
1. Send an email to telecomdigestsubmissions.atsign.telecom-digest.org.
2. Use an NNTP client, such as pine, or a combined email/nntp program,
such as Mozilla Thunderbird, to subscribe to the Usenet group
comp.dcom.telecom and send posts to the Telecom Digest via a Usenet
server. If your ISP doesn't have a Usenet server, there are free ones
available, such as the one at eternal-september.org.
3. Use a commercial portal, such as Google, to access the Usenet group
comp.dcom.telecom. You will have to have an account with the portal's
owner in order to do this, but they're usually issued without charge.
No matter which way you send a message to The Telecom Digest, each
message's “Subject” line must contain one of the following tags in order
to be excepted from our spam-prevention process. There is no guarantee
that a message without one of these tags will ever be read. The brackets
around each tag must be included, but the quotes are not required; please
note that the keywords in the tags are not case sensitive.
“[telecom]”
... if your post can be published verbatim.
“[nfp]”
... (Not For Publication) if your email is only for the Moderator's
eyes.
“[obfuscate]”
... if you want the Moderator to modify your email address before
publishing your post so that it cannot be used without being
changed, i.e., so that it can't be copied by a spambot and used to
send you spam. If you are a frequent Digest contributor, you may
request that your email address be automatically obfuscated anytime
you send a post, so that you may submit contributions without the
need for the “[obfuscate]” tag.
“[anonymous]”
... if you want all traces of your identity removed from the post
before it is published. (See rules about anonymous postings, shown
below.)
For example:
Subject: Eleven-digit phone numbers are coming [telecom]
Subject: Cell phone SMS spam is getting worse [Obfuscate]
Subject: I haven't seen my post yet [nfp]
Subject: Re: Verizon just fired me for being honest [Anonymous]
Q. What are the Moderator's criteria for acceptable posts?
A. In general, the Moderator approves posts which meet the guidelines
shown here. The Moderator's decisions are binding, but readers are always
welcome to argue their case for an exception or for special treatment: in
other words, if a post is rejected, a contributor may ask the Moderator
to reconsider. The Moderator, in turn, may ask that potential posts be
modified so as to make them acceptable, or may refuse to reconsider a
decision to reject. The Moderator's decision is not subject to appeal,
and The Telecom Digest does not allow “meta” discussions about moderation
policies or decisions.
Q. What are the rules about content?
A. There are very few rules. The most important are listed here:
1. Netiquette is both encouraged and enforced. The Telecom Digest does
not allow ad hominem attacks, unwarranted sarcasm, foul language,
undocumented allegations of illegal or improper conduct, or other
kinds of viciousness. The Moderator reserves the right to be
completely arbitrary and capricious when making decisions about posts
which, in the Moderator's sole and exclusive judgment, are
inappropriate for publication.
2. Posts must concern telecommunications using the spoken word or
keyboards, i.e., they should be about the ways, people, politics,
instruments, equipment, inventions, costs, history, and regulations
that bear on spoken or text-based conversations between human beings.
3. Posts which bear on other aspects of the PSTN are allowed if they
are germane to discussion about the worldwide telephone network in
some other way: e.g., a post about "texting" while driving would be
OK, and a post about the use of phones while on an airline flight
would also be acceptable.
4. The Moderator enjoys the privilege of modifying both spelling and
grammar when, in the Moderator's judgment, a post is not clear enough
to read without changes. Posts which require extensive rewriting are
usually rejected and returned to their authors for rework, but in
cases where the author cannot be contacted (e.g., when a poster does
not use a valid email address), then the Moderator may choose to step
in and modify a post rather than delete it.
Q. What are the formatting and style rules?
A. The Digest has both formatting rules and style guidelines. Here are
the rules:
1. You must clearly identify the source(s) of quoted material.
2. Any quotes which the Moderator deems to be excessively long are
subject to trimming.
3. Advertisements, even those automatically added to posts by “ree”
email/Usenet servers without a poster's consent, are unacceptable and
may be removed.
4. “artooney” legal statements which purport to limit the legal
rights of someone who reads a post will always be deleted, or the
post rejected. I don't care if your company email server adds them
automatically: color them gone.
5. Your post must be written in English. Although it may contain words
or phrases that are commonly used by non-English speaking peoples,
such entries must be generally acceptable in the English-speaking
online world.
6. No attachments of any sort are ever accepted. MIME emails are
always converted to plain text before they are reviewed for
publication, so HTML is always converted to plain text as well. MIME
content such as V-Cards, and images such as corporate logos, are also
removed.
7. You may include URLs in your posts so long as they contain a valid
domain name and point to a server which is currently online and where
the page is available for inspection prior to publication. IP
addresses are never allowed in place of domain names, and the
Moderator reserves the right to delete any URL that does not point to
a well-known domain in a free country.
8. Since some readers use software which cannot automatically wrap
long lines to fit the computer screen, please include a "hard"
newline at the end of every line of your post. Posts that have
“un-on” lines will be either rejected or reformatted, at the
Moderator's option, to comply with this convention.
9. The “Official” character set of The Telecom Digest is UTF-8;
US-ASCII is also acceptable. If you submit a post that uses another
character set, it might be rejected. There are some exceptions:
* NO Non-essential UTF-8 Characters are allowed in Subject lines!
NONE!
* NO Decoration, Unneeded Foreign-language Symbols, or other
“eyecatcher” characters are allowed in messages. NONE!
10. Please do not use “Quoted Printable” encoding. Some Usenet clients
cannot decode it, and that means I must remove it by hand, but if I
miss a “Quoted-Prinable” email, and send it out unchanged, that
leaves the readers who see it with a jumble of strange characters
that they must try to quess at or interpret by sight.
For example, here's a snippet of an email which was sent to the
Telecom Digest:
iPhone 13 deals are extra aggressive this year, here=E2=80=99s why
11. Any post submitted with base64 or other encoding which isn’t
readable “as is” will be rejected.
Q. Are there any guidelines about the style of posts?
A. Yes, and they are listed here. The Moderator reserves the right to
modify non-compliant posts before publication if he chooses.
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1. Please remember that The Telecom Digest has a worldwide audience,
and that not all people use the email formatting customs which are
common in the United States, and not all readers have access to
high-definition computer screens that can show hundreds of characters
per line, and not all readers have young eyes. The above ruler is a
reminder to keep the lines of your posts within a seventy-column
right margin, so as to allow room for quote marks in the left margin
of followup posts.
2. Please don't include “ASCII art” in your posts, including signature
lines: don't forget that these sorts of decoration depend on
fixed-width fonts to be readable, and that each Digest reader gets to
choose the font (s)he prefers. For example, a .sig file that looks
like the following on your screen ...
|*******************|*****************************|
| Bill Horne | Sage, Seer, Soothsayer, and |
| Burnsville, NC | former used-car salesman at |
| 828-536-OhToo64 | Worthington Ford |
|*******************|*****************************|
... will look very different on the screen of a user whom has set
their email client or browser to use variable-width fonts ...
|*******************|*****************************| | Bill Horne |
Sage, Seer, Soothsayer, and | | Burnsville, NC | former used-car
salesman at | | 828-536-OhToo64 | Worthington Ford |
|*******************|*****************************|
3. Please do not use “leetspeak” or other childish misspellings.
4. Excessive capitalization or using inappropriate mixtures of upper
and lower case is frowned upon.
5. Please limit the size of “sig” files, and avoid pretentious
quoting. Less IS more.
Q. Does The Telecom Digest accept anonymous posts?
A. Sometimes, but reluctantly. Posters who request anonymity must add the
“[anonymous]” tag to the subject line of their posts, and the Moderator
makes a judgment on a case-by-case basis. Posters who request anonymity
will please provide a brief reason for the request in a clearly-separated
section of the email, e.g.,
******************************************************************
Please publish this anonymously. My country is
arresting those who discuss this subject publicly.
******************************************************************
Keep in mind that, if your request for an anonymous post is accepted, ALL
information which might point to your identity will be deleted from your
post. The post will appear with a different message-id than the one it
arrived with, and all headers will be stripped, so you must include
anything you want published in the body of your post. Of course, if you
request an anonymous post but you want to include a website address, a
product name, or other items of commercial value, then the post will be
evaluated with an eye toward that and will almost always be rejected.
Don't even think of asking the Moderator to serve as a postman for
encrypted emails: if you want to have someone encrypt their emails to
you, then you must use a publicly-reachable email address and request
encrypted replies in your post. Of course, you'll have to offer to trade
X.509 or PGP keys in private emails, or have a PGP key available on a
public key-server, such as pgp.mit.edu: the Telecom Digest does not
publish PGP keys.
Q. May I “spam-proof” my email address?
A. Yes. It's OK to make your address “human readable”, so that readers
can send replies directly to you, but spam robots can't pick your address
off our website and use it to spam you. However - If your email address
is indecipherable, then your post will be reviewed more stringently than
posts sent by those who are willing to receive direct emails. There is,
of course, a gray area between having a “spam-proof” address and having
an unusable one, and the Moderator makes decisions on a case-by-case
basis as to whether posts with invalid email addresses are acceptable.
Q. Where are the archives of old posts?
A. Some are available on the Telecom Digest website, which is at
http://www.telecom-digest.org/, but editions of the Digest produced
before 2007 might not be online in a format that you can search or obtain
with a web browser. As time allows, the Moderator is finding ways to make
them more easy to use, and I welcome help with this project.
Q. Can we write about things that came before telephones?
A. Posts about things like semaphore signaling, Morse Code, The Pony
Express, and Carrier Pigeons are discouraged. Such subjects may, however,
be mentioned by posters who choose to illustrate the history, technology,
regulations, and social forces which formed the PSTN we use today, but
posts may not focus exclusively on them.
Q. Can I post a story about things which might come after telephones?
A. Not unless you are speculating in a believable way about the future
direction the PSTN will take. The Telecom Digest is not a venue for
Science Fiction, so if you want to post about phones on other planets, or
other ways of communication which haven't been discovered yet, then
you'll need to find a more appropriate place for your work.
Q. Since the line between "Data" and "Telephone" gets more blurry every
day, how do you draw the line between VoIP services such as Vonage and
Skype, and the more traditional telephone network?
A. If it concerns people using electronic means to talk to each other,
it's fair game, provided that the method(s) being used are capable of
connecting to the PSTN or are provided by a recognized common carrier.
When there is room for doubt, each post is judged on its own merits.
Q. If I can sign up to receive each post separately, why is it called
"The Telecom Digest"?
A. The original Telecom Digest was a compilation of emails that were
received by the Moderator each day. The Moderator assembled each day's
digest by hand, and sent it out manually, so there was no other
subscription option besides the “Digest” version. When The Telecom Digest
was made available to Usenet readers, that changed, but the original
title of the publication remained, so it is still called "The Telecom
Digest". Up until 2007, the email version of The Telecom Digest was still
assembled by hand each day, and was thus available only in digest form,
even though it was, by that time, sent out using an automated email robot
located at John Levine's server in New York. The email robot in use is
“SYMPA”, which allows subscribers to choose either digest or individual
emails, and since Usenet readers already enjoyed the option of seeing
individual posts, Sympa is programmed to give email subscribers the same
choice.
Q. What are the options available to subscribers using the email robot?
A. There are too many to list here: to get started on them, send a "plain
text" email to sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org with the word "help" in
the subject line.
Q. How do I unsubscribe?
A. Send an email to sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org, with the command
“unsubscribe telecom” in the subject line of the message. If you no
longer have access to the email account from which you subscribed, use
the command "unsubscribe telecom <old.email.address>". If you don't have
the password for an old account, and no longer have access to it to send
emails to the SYMPA robot, then you may ask the Moderator to intercede
and unsubscribe an old address on your behalf. Such requests are always
verified. Please note: the SYMPA robot will AUTOMATICALLY unsubscribe any
email address that is “bouncing” emails FOR ANY REASON. If your mailbox
is full, you might lose your subscription, so please turn off delivery of
the Digest when you go on vacation!
Q. How do I turn off delivery of the Telecom Digest while I'm on
vacation?
A. You need only send a “set” command to the email robot, with the
appropriate option. See the help file for more info.
Example: if you send an email to sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org, and put
set telecom nomail
... in the subject line of the message, Sympa will stop delivery of your
subscription until you send another “set” command to restart it.
End of the Telecom Digest FAQ.
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