Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> BTW could someone tell us what this list is?

Qalam is "a mailing list about the writing systems of the world"
<http://www.egroups.com/group/qalam>. Nothing more and nothing less than
that.

I am the owner of Qalam, and the only person guilty for any problem with it.
I prefer to hide my identity behind the nickname "Seshat" (BTW, the Egyptian
goddess of writing) mainly because I don't want to spoil my reputation for
tolerance when I will have to show my wrath to spammers disturbing my
mailing list. (Moreover, my alter ego wishes to take part in the discussion
as any other member, with no annoying "aura of authority" on her head.)

The mailing list is open to people of all kinds, who share an interest in
the broad field of grammatology, as ye would say.

Qalam is hosted by eGroups <http://www.egroups.com/> (now part of Yahoo!),
"a free email group service that allows you to easily create and join email
groups" <http://www.egroups.com/info/features.html>. (BTW, as one may
expect, eGroups is "free" in the sense that we actually "pay" the service by
reading the commercial ads added on top of all our postings:-)

> Bill Bright and I received invitations to participate.

Only a handful of brave members discovered Qalam on their own, probably
browsing the eGroups indices.

Anybody else has been invited. Most members reacted to an open invitation
that was sent to the mailing list of the Unicode Consortium
<http://www.unicode.org/unicode/consortium/distlist.html>.

Ye and a few other well-known experts in the field have been (or are being)
invited personally.

Thank you for being here.

> I see that one needs to join egroups in order to access the websites,
> and I don't care to do that, since joining such a group inevitably
> results in increased spam.

Unsolicited mail is a nuisance for everybody, but eGroups has a firm policy
and a few interesting tools against it:

- Members' e-mail addresses are *obscured* on the web site. Have a look at
the web copy of your last message <http://www.egroups.com/message/qalam/23>,
and you'll see that the last part of your address is missing:
"grammatim@...". The first part of your e-mail is enough for us to identify
you, but the gap at the end prevents "e-mail harvesting" software to put
collect your address.

- This also applies to any e-mail contained *within* the message body.
Yesterday, Professor Bright mentioned a third person's e-mail in his message
<http://www.egroups.com/message/qalam/22>, and this is what remains of it on
the web site: "lb11@...".

2) The terms of service of eGroups prohibit spamming (see
<http://www.egroups.com/info/tos.html>,
<http://www.egroups.com/info/nospam.html>). All violations may be reported
to <abuse@egroups.com> (and I think they are quite harsh).

3) I configured the forum so that *only* registered Qalam members may post
messages. Strictly speaking, this does not prevent spamming or other
unwelcome behaviour. But, you see... One does it *once*, and I have the
means to kick him/her out *forever*!

You can actually access the Qalam website
(<http://www.egroups.com/group/qalam>), but not the database and links
sections (<http://www.egroups.com/database/qalam> and
<http://www.egroups.com/links/qalam>), because these are currently reserved
to eGroups members. (Ye and other people who subscribed by mail, using
<qalam-subscribe@egroups.com>, are members of Qalam, but *not* yet members
of eGroups).

You may register with eGroups through this page
<http://www.egroups.com/register?referer=%2Fmygroups>. It is free, and it
can be anonymous.

Notice that this should not expose you to more spam, because your e-mail is
just used as a sign-in id, and not seen by anybody.

Well, actually, it is not seen by anybody *apart* eGroups themselves... And,
in fact, eGroups may use your address to send you commercial information.
The good news is that they will only do so if you explicitly authorize them.
One of the last steps on the registration process prompts you to select
which commercial information you wish to receive. Simply make sure that *no*
box is checked, and you exclude all this "controlled spam".

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Seshat (Qalam owner)


______________________________________________
FREE Personalized Email at Mail.com
Sign up at http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup