Hunterdon County Mail List (NJHUNTER)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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The Hunterdon County Mail List allows subscribers to talk about genealogy in Hunterdon County. Generally, when we say Hunterdon County, we mean Hunterdon County as it is currently defined. At one time Morris, Mercer, Warren and Sussex counties were all part of Hunterdon County. If you are researching your family in those counties, they also have mail lists and you will have more success if you post there.

NJHUNTER is hosted by Rootsweb. Rootsweb is the Internet's oldest and largest genealogy site. The Rootsweb project has two missions:

1. To make large volumes of data available to the online genealogical community at minimal cost.

2. To provide support services to online genealogical activities such as USENET newsgroup moderation, mailing list maintenance, surname list generation, etc.

Subjects in this FAQ

1. About Mailing Lists
2. List Modes Affect How You Receive Posts
3. How to subscribe and unsubscribe
4. NJHUNTER Has Two Addresses
5. What is a closed list? An open list?
6. What is acceptable or unacceptable on the list?
7. What is spam? How do I stop it?
8. My mail is bouncing, what does that mean?
9. I am changing my email address (ISP). What do I do?
10. Why am I getting mail with html coding in it?
11. Mail from my mail list is all red. I can't read it.
12. My digest mail is unreadable.
13. I can't open any of the attachments on digest mail.
14. I want to contact someone, but I am told that their email address is not valid. How do I contact this person?
15. General Netiquette
16. Computer Viruses

1. About Mailing Lists

A mailing list is a way of forwarding messages to others that are interested in the same genealogical research as you. You send your message to the list and it is sent to everyone who has subscribed to that list. And everything that anyone else sends to the list will be sent to you. It is a great way to find others who are researching in the same area or are researching the same surname.

A mail list does not have an address that you can go to. It is not a place on the Internet. It only forwards email messages. It will have an address like: [email protected]

2. List Modes Affect How You Receive Posts

NJHUNTER operates in two modes:

• MAIL mode, where every post is sent to subscribers as a separate piece of e-mail. MAIL mode requires a great deal of effort by the list-serving computer. NJHUNTER normally operates in the MAIL mode.

• DIGEST mode, where about twenty posts are batched together and then sent to the subscribers. Digests produce less clutter in your mailbox, but replying to an individual message may require a little extra effort. NJHUNTER�s digest mode is NJHUNTER-D.

3. How to subscribe and unsubscribe

You can subscribe to this mailing list by sending a message to [email protected] with the following word as the only text in the body of the message: subscribe. If your ISP requires that you have a subject in your message, you can enter the word subscribe also. The computer will automatically read your mail id from the headers of the message that you send. You will receive a message back confirming that you are subscribed to the list.

If you want to subscribe to the digest mode of NJHUNTER, send your message to [email protected]. Again only the word subscribe should appear in the message. You will receive a message back confirming that you are subscribed to the list.

To unsubscribe from NJHUNTER, send a message to [email protected] with only the word unsubscribe in the message. You must unsubscribe from the mail id that you subscribed with. You will receive a message confirming that you have been unsubscribed from the list. If you subscribed to the digest mode of NJHUNTER, send a message to [email protected]. Again the only text in the message should be unsubscribe.

4. NJHUNTER Has Two Addresses

Every mailing list really has two addresses:

• the list name, where posts should be sent, and

• the list name followed by -request, where commands to the listserver software should be sent.

For example, all posts to NJHUNTER should go to [email protected] even if you have subscribed to the digest mode. All "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests should go to [email protected].

If you try to post to the list but send your message to NJHUNTER-L-request, only the list owner will get to read it. He will probably send it back to you with a request to post directly to the list. Please make sure you post to the list and not to the listserver.

5. What is a closed list? An open list?

A closed list means that you must be a subscriber to the list before you can post to the list. An open list means anyone can post. Having a closed list helps to prevent spam from being sent out on a list, and for this reason most lists at Rootsweb are now closed. NJHUNTER is a closed list. Therefore you must be a subscriber to post to NJHUNTER.

This is really not an unreasonable requirement as the list has adopted a policy of replying on the list to posts so that all members may share in the information.

If you try to post to the list while you are not subscribed, the message will go to the list administrator who will return it to you with a request that you join the list. The list administrator will not post your message to the list.

6. What is acceptable or unacceptable on the list?

The NJHUNTER mail list is for discussion about genealogical research or history in Hunterdon County. This is a fairly broad statement and it is meant to be so to encourage discussion. As long as your post is in good taste and has some connection to Hunterdon County, it will be OK.

Please do not try to include attachments to your post. Attachments can really clog up the mail servers and will be bounced by Rootsweb. If you have a photo or document that you think the list may be interested in, post a message describing it and ask people to contact you privately. You can then send them a private copy of the document.

The list is not the place for advertising. Commercial advertising is strictly prohibited and steps will be taken to remove offenders. However, advertising, if that is the right word, for genealogical or historical events is welcome.

Roll calls are not necessary. The list has already experienced this once and it generated a lot of traffic. To avoid the need for a roll call, the Hunterdon County GenWeb site, maintains a registry of surnames that people are researching. If you want to have the surnames that you are researching listed, send a mail message to [email protected] listing the surnames that you are researching.

Please do not send test messages to the list. Post something useful or ask a question. Test messages just clog up the mail servers.

7. What is spam? How do I stop it?

Spam is the name given to any unwanted email. Generally, it is a mass mailing offering get rich quick schemes, advertisements, porn, virus warnings, hoaxes, etc.

It is not welcome on any list and it causes many problems. The massive loads these mass emails produce can cause the computers at Rootsweb to grind to a halt. Maiser, a former genealogy server like Rootsweb, was brought down by a single spammer (the person who sends the spam).

If you get a spam message, don�t read it and do not respond to it. Rootsweb has special filter to remove most spam but occasionally some objectionable messages will get through. Just delete the message. Please do not reply to the list about the message, you are only propagating the spam.

If you cross post to more than a few lists, you may be considered a spammer by the Rootsweb computer. At that time your message will be blocked, and possibly your name and address will be blocked from Rootsweb too.

8. My mail is bouncing, what does that mean?

When the computer attempts to deliver an email to you and it cannot, the email is returned to the sender. This is called a bounce. There are several reasons for an email to bounce. It could be a bad address, a full mailbox, your ISP, or Internet problems. Many of these problems are temporary and will fix themselves. If it continues, contact your ISP.

After four bounces you will be automatically unsubscribed from Roots Web's mailing lists (it's necessary because bouncing mail can wreck havoc on the server). If you have stopped receiving mail from the list, that is generally why. You can re-subscribe to the list, but if that fails you will need to notify the list administrator, so he can manually subscribe you.

To contact the list administrator of NJHUNTER, send an email to [email protected]. Let me know what the problem is and I try to get you back on the list.

9. I am changing my email address (ISP). What do I do?

If you're subscribed to NJHUNTER, you will need to unsubscribe using your old address and then subscribe using your new address. If you didn't unsubscribe before changing addresses, you will need to notify the list administrator to request that he manually unsubscribe/subscribe you.

To contact the list administrator of NJHUNTER, send an email to [email protected]. Let me know what the problem is and I try to get you back on the list.

10. Why am I getting mail with html coding in it?

Have you gotten email that has the same message repeated at the bottom, with a bunch of bracketed coding? That bottom section contains html coding.

Users of Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Outlook Express often send email with html coding in it. Usually they do this inadvertently, but it is very annoying for mail list readers and is a resource system hog.

Users should make sure that they set their email preference to "HTML ENCODING OFF" or "ENRICHED TEXT OFF."

NJHUNTER will automatically reject any message that appears to have HTML code in it. The message will be return to the originator. Please make sure you have turned off HTML coding in your mail package.

11. Mail from my mail list is all red. I can't read it.

This is another annoying feature of some newer ISP (server) communications packages. Rootsweb users should refrain from sending mail with any type of html color coding in it.  Most users cannot read colors and often the incoming ISP will detect a code and try to read it. Users will complain about very strange email colors and text colors. Please turn off any mail color-coding.

12. My digest mail is unreadable.

You need to set your mail preferences to receive attachments as inline links or as straight text. Some mail servers will interpret a digest mail as a mail message with a lot of attachments. This is very frustrating for users, and should be easily fixed. Rootsweb can't help you. You will need to contact your mail system administrator for specific help in setting up your mail preferences file.

13. I can't open any of the attachments on digest mail.

You need to set your mail preferences to receive attachments as inline links or as straight text. Some mail servers strip the attachments and leave you with the first message only. This is very frustrating for users, and should be easily fixed. Rootsweb can't help you. You will need to contact your mail system administrator for specific help in setting up your mail preferences file.

14. I want to contact someone, but I am told that their email address is not valid. How do I contact this person?

Unfortunately, we have no way of tracing that person. You might want to try using a search engine on the Internet (such as Yahoo, Switchboard, WhoWhere, etc.) to see if you can find a snail mail or email address for them.

15. General Netiquette

Read carefully what you receive to make sure that you understand the message. Read carefully what you send, to make sure that your message will not be misunderstood.

Please be careful about the information you post. This is particularly true about people who are still living. If you need to send personal information, send a private message instead of posting to the list.

If you are responding to a message, either include the relevant part of the original message, or make sure you unambiguously refer to the original contents. It is very common for people to read your reply before they read the original message. However, please avoid unnecessarily lengthy quotations from the messages to which you are responding. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your added material is 50% or more of the message.

In order to allow people to quickly scan your message to see if it might be of interest to them, remember to put surnames in capitals. This will help them to stand out. However, do not put everything in capitals as this is considered to be SHOUTING.

16. Computer Viruses

This list is not a place to discuss computer viruses, nor to post warnings about a computer viruses.  There are discussion groups for that purpose, join one of them if you are so inclined.  The List Administrator can remove people from the list, or keep them from posting to the list.  I have not had to do this yet, but posting a message about a computer virus is a good way to get bounced off the list.