[PW] Announcement: Forced Filtering

[John Franklin]

There have been a number of off-list messages recently asking,  
basically, "should I send [thing that probably doesn't meet the  
posting guidelines] to the list?"

As usual, the answer is made difficult by the "Classic" list. The  
Open list is explicitly unfiltered, and the FM list is explicitly  
filtered; people are worried that their message might be deemed  
inappropriate for the Classic list by the moderators, and so don't  
send anything at all. That makes the Open list somewhat less useful  
than it was originally intended to be.

One way around this, given the configuration of the software, would  
be to post such messages from a separate mail account, which would  
not be recognized by the server and thus would be held for moderation  
on all versions of the list. That's a lot of work, though, and it  
smells of kludge.

On the other hand, it does not seem unreasonable for there to be a  
way for subscribers to tentatively submit a message for moderator  
approval without writing to the moderators to say "would this be  
okay" (which wastes a lot of time).

To make a long story short: subscribers may now force their messages  
to be considered by the moderators on the Classic list by sending  
them (the messages) to

filtered-list at project-wombat.org

This address is otherwise functionally identical to the standard list  
address. (That is, if you are a subscriber your message will go out  
to the Open list immediately. The FM list, of course, holds  
everything for the moderators.) Please only use this address if you  
think your message might not be appropriate for the Classic list. If  
you need a refresher on the Classic guidelines, see
http://www.project-wombat.org/posting_guidelines.shtml

(The website will be updated when I have time for a general overhaul.)

(This message is, incidentally, also a test of the new address. May  
as well kill two birds with one stone.)

-John Franklin
Chair, Project Wombat Advisory Board