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Frequently Asked Questions

When you're done here, you might want to poke your love through this hole as well. Comments regarding this FAQ should be internalised. If you're desperate, send them here. Don't worry. Nobody will read them.

N.B. If you're new here and having difficulties with messages to My Family Mailing List disappearing into the void, please read section 1.7 before trying again.

What's found in this document:

1.0 My Family Mailing List

1.1 What is My Family Mailing List?

1.2 How do I subscribe to My Family Mailing List?

1.3 How do I unsubscribe from My Family Mailing List?

1.4 How do I post messages to the list?

1.5 What can I post to the My Family Mailing List list?

1.6 What should NOT be posted?

1.7 Rules for posting

1.8 I just got flamed by a list member!

2.0 Advanced Features

2.1 Browsing and Searching the My Family Mailing List archives

2.2 An Explanation of My Family Mailing Listtags

2.3 Full Command Summary

3.0 Other Stuff

3.1 Who maintains My Family Mailing List?

3.2 How much traffic is there?

3.3 Have any list members ever been sued for libel by Thora Hird?

4.0 Glossary

4.1 I don't understand some of the terms used on My Family Mailing List because I'm stupid and rubbish. Could you explain them?


My Family Mailing List

1.1 What is My Family Mailing List?

My Family Mailing List is Britain's number one 'My Family' mailing list[1], presenting quality discussion to entertain and inspire fans of Zoe Wannamaker and Robert Lindsay, and general discussion about the show.

1.2 How do I subscribe to My Family Mailing List?

Apply in writing to the My Family Mailing List head office and enclose a naked picture of yourself with your application. Your request will then be evaluated by Rodney McElroy, based on the quality of your gerunds.

Or, you could send a blank e-mail to brass-subscribe@cream.org and reply to the confirmation message that will be sent to you. It's up to you, really.

1.3 How do I unsubscribe from My Family Mailing List?

The best way to unsubscribe is to send a message to the list saying, "Please undubdribe me from your newsgroup". Actually, this is a lie. What will really happen if you do this is that you will be hunted down and stabbed in the nostril for asking such an unbelievably stupid question.

The correct way to save yourself from nasal surgery is to send a blank e-mail to brass-unsubscribe@cream.org, and then reply to the confirmation message that will be sent to you. Then you can go about your business, albeit slightly less so.

If you have trouble unsubscribing it is probably your own stupid fault, so it is worth trying the unsubscription process a few times, possibly on subsequent attempts actually bothering to follow these instructions.

1.4 How do I post messages to the list?

Once you are a subscribed member of My Family Mailing List (see above) you can post messages by sending them to brass@cream.org. the listserver will distribute your message to everyone who is subscribed to the list, including yourself.

1.5 What can I post to My Family Mailing List?

Post what you blooming like. File attachments are allowed but, if you value your genitalia, keep them small (under 200k). Large attachments tend to enrage list members who have slow dial-up connections and remind them how inadequate they are.

1.6 What should NOT be posted?

Don't send spam, chain letters, mailbombs, etc. to the list because it's just plain stupid and you will be killed. Apart from that, please yourself.

1.7 Rules for posting

1. Subject headers - If your post is on-topic (whatever that means), prepend ++ to the subject header. If, as is likely, it doesn't, prepend --. If your post has a filthy, depraved, sickening, pornographic or otherwise grim attachment or external linkage, then make sure that NOF [Not Office Friendly] is also at the start of your subject. If your post contains list meta-info (no-one knows what this is), then prepend LIST:; similarly If you are arranging a meat. For important news start it with NEWS:.

Please remember, the list software will not deliver any mail that does not contain one of these mystic glyphs, so don't forget them. In addition, the McElroy will also place [b] in the subject of every post. This should convince anybody monitoring your email that you are wasting your life. Which is undoubtedly true.

2. Clean Quoting - Try to be tidy. There are always wankers who quote an entire mail and add "I agree" at the bottom. AOL users, usually. Don't do it. Cut out the irrelevant. It just looks nicer, and good feng shui is our main objective. Similarly, don't not quote the message you are replying to at all. Nobody will have the faintest idea what you are on about, and they will hate you. Really, really hate you.

3. [Pre/Post/Inter]epistolic Contextual Posting - Look, it's very simple. Bottom post to continue the conversation in an egregious supine manner. Top post to wrench the conversation violently against its will into a new direction thus invalidating the person you are replying to by letting the reader know you shouldn't even bother with the below. The Contextual-Interepistolic posting provision [2nd-generation] should be used if the other person is so stupid you have to tear them apart line by line. This is the default.

1.8 I just got flamed by a list member!

Good. You probably deserved it. And it provided entertainment for the rest of us. Keep up the good work.

Advanced Features

2.1 Browsing and searching the My Family Mailing List archives

It is possible to read every post ever made to the list (apart from the ones that were made before Rodney McElroy's original frontend popped up) by utilising the My Family Mailing List archives. There are two ways of doing this: You can browse or search the archives here, or alternatively this little scriptlet will always take you to the latest installment of My Family Mailing Listtic goodness. You may wish to bookmark either of these links. Or not.

2.2 An Explanation of My Family Mailing Listtags

Tagged on to the end of every post to the list is a My Family Mailing Listtag, put there by the benevolent list software. To understand what the tags mean, you have to see one. They tend to look like this:

* Last Subject: Re: [b] Well Funny --*

* Last Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 10:46:32 +0100 --*

* 09:450-17 --*

From this My Family Mailing Listtag we can determine that the last subject of a post to the list was "Re: [b] Well Funny", and that this post was made on Monday the 16th of September 2002 at 10:46:32 +0100. The following line means that we are in the 9th month of the year (09), that there have been 450 posts this month so far (450) and that 17 of them were made today (17). My Family Mailing Listtags are there so that you can make sure you recieve all the postings. And so you can see how many messages you've wasted your pointless blooming existence reading.

Don't worry, nobody remembers any of this. Just think of them as My Family Mailing List background noise or Somebody Else's Problem.

2.3 Full Command Summary

You can tell the list software to do lots of pointless things by poking it in certain ways. Here's a summary of the email commands and what they do:

Other Stuff

3.1 Who maintains My Family Mailing List?

Rodney keeps the list grammatically correct, but whelkings no authoritive role. No posts to the list have ever been censored, and to date he has never kicked anyone off the list for being a prick. Although he has driven a few people to incorrect present participle usage.

3.2 How much traffic is there?

More than somebody with anything better to do could handle. Fortunately this doesn't include you.

3.3 Have any list members ever been sued for libel by Thora Hird?

Yes. This is something of which we are understandably proud.

Glossary

4.1 I don't understand some of the terms used on My Family Mailing List because I'm stupid and rubbish. Could you explain some of them?

Here's some of the things you're likely to hear on My Family Mailing List, and what they mean to the man on the street:

DBC

- A Desk-Bound Cnut, i.e. an office worker who dosses around and gets out of doing as much work as possible by posting to My Family Mailing List.

nice

- Like good, only nicer, but not really good.

lick me Mr nice

- self-explanatory, really.

Dub

- To subscribe to the list.

Undub

- Same thing only backwards.

SEZ

- Chiefly Mancunian riposte. Usage: A: "You are a really nice MyFamlier." B: "SEZ".

Tacit

- This means that an obvious punchline has been left tacit. This construction is impossible for Mancunians to master.

Hundlebeast

- The Hundlebeast is a mythical creature with six legs and a hat, that stalks the whelkinggrounds and haylofts of Manchester. If you're ever in Manchester at night, listen out for its distinctive cry of, "MyFamlieMyFamlieMyFamlie!" as it claims another victim.

MyFamlier

- A Hundlebeast in a car-coat.

Gargin/Gargreally

- A ginger troll.

FAQ

- Frequently Asked Questions (and answers). You're reading one. Idiot.

Flame

- A nasty, insulting or otherwise entertaining email.

These pages were sponged from the brow of many fine folk. In order of incarceration, Tim Berry (deceased), John McElroy (oh yes), Martin McElroy (me) and Nell "well funny" McElroy. That man knows his CSS. This nice webbing is because of ice cream.

Back to My Family Mailing List

[1] This is a lie.