David – (Just noticed a typo in the first set of rules. It's a small one; there is an "if" instead of an "is" in the third paragraph: "Be aware that the main purpose of the list IS to provide a place for discussion until the message board on the website is up and running.") Here are some draft rules for the Group Read, just because I have the time: readalong at dragaera.info is fine, and group-read at dragaera.info would also be fine. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Scope of List and Rules Below ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This list, with Steven's permission, is to provide a central forum for those fans of his work also interested in role-playing to “read” one (only one at a time to avoid confusion) of his books at the same time and engage in discussion and speculation about said book. This is basically a virtual book club. Day-to-day operation is handled by "Paarfi" (reference should be obvious). All decisions of Paarfi are final until he changes his mind. The current [8-Jun-2002] Paarfi is ???????????? <INSERT EMAIL>. "On topic" material for this list includes all discussions related to whatever book the list is currently reading – this includes discussions and speculations about characters, plot, nit-picks, etc. Also acceptable are moderate amounts of "community" off-topic discussion; and such digressions as are more trouble to suppress than to ignore. This discussion must be conducted reasonably civilly. In particular, personal attacks and flaming are forbidden. Do NOT tell somebody that they're a poo-poo head; you may, if you wish, tell them that their claim to have found Devera on page 184 of Dragon doesn't stand up to examination. When replying to a message on the list, relevant portions of the previous message should be quoted. The *entire* message should generally not be quoted, unless you're responding to each bit of it. New material should be placed *below* the old material it's responding to, not above. In other words, normal Usenet quoting conventions should be observed. Line lengths should be limited to less than 80 characters (70 is a better number, to allow for some buildup of quoting). Do not send file attachments to the list. Especially, do not send binary files to the list. Do not send HTML to the list. Send plain text messages to the list. All those other things will be stripped off by the software running the list. (Technicalities: MIME multipart/alternative is fine, so long as there is a text/plain part; that part will be passed through and the rest stripped.) (AOL users: that's what current AOL software does by default [as of 15-Apr-2002] so you shouldn't have trouble posting). The views expressed in messages on this list may be the views of the people who sent the messages (or their evil twins – we don’t discriminate here); they are *not* the official views of anybody else. Note that this applies even to Steven and those of us running the list -- unless specifically stated otherwise, we're posting our personal opinions, not Official Truth. While Steven doesn't hate fan fiction on principle, he doesn't want to host it on the official web site or mailing list, so please don't send any. The information about the subscribers that we have (from the email headers; name and email address) will be posted to the list monthly, so people know with whom they are talking. The posts to this list are archived and are publicly available via email and on the web. Only list members may post to this list (this is primarily a spam-prevention measure). To subscribe, send email to <INSERT NAME-subscribe at dragaera.info>, and respond to the confirmation message you will receive. (The confirmation message makes it much harder for somebody to subscribe you to this list as a "joke".) To unsubscribe, send email to <INSERT NAME-unsubscribe at dragaera.info> from the address you want unsubscribed, and respond to the confirmation message you will receive there. To send your message to all the subscribers on the list, send it to <INSERT NAME at dragaera.info>. You must be a subscriber to the list yourself to do this. To communicate just with the Empress, email your message to <INSERT NAME-owner at dragaera.info>. To get help on the various commands the list management software supports, send email to <dragaera-help at dragaera.info>. (Technicalities: this list is run using ezmlm+idx). The home page for this list is http://dragaera.info/dragaera-list/. Steven's web site is at http://www.dreamcafe.com This mailing list, and the eventual related web site, is a project of Corwin Brust, David Dyer-Bennet, and Felix Strates, with the support of Steven Brust.