TTM Mailer Info (as distributed by John Kender)

        TTM: Trichotillomania Tele-Mailer 

TTM: Trichotillomania Tele-Mailer

Welcome to the Trichotillomania Tele-Mailer, an automatic mailing list for
people involved with trichotillomania. Trichotillomania ("trich", "TTM") is
an impulse control disorder of uncertain origin characterized by a recurrent
urge to pull out one's own hair.

PLEASE SAVE THIS FILE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE!

It would be a courtesy to the many existing list members if you would take the
time to read this message in its entirety. It has five sections: a) basic
information, b) general ground rules, c) general procedures, d) acknowledge-
ments, and e) a Frequently Asked Questions document ("FAQ").


A) BASIC INFORMATION

This mailer will rebroadcast to all the list membership whatever you mail to:
ttm@cs.columbia.edu 

For more information on how to use this list, send a message consisting of the
words "help ttm" in the text of a message (do not use the subject field) to:
majordomo@cs.columbia.edu

To subscribe to this list so that you receive individual copies of messages,
much like regular email, send a message consisting of "subscribe ttm" to:
majordomo@cs.columbia.edu

To subscribe to this list so that you receive batched messages, about 15-20
at a time, send a message consisting of "subscribe ttm-digest" to:
majordomo@cs.columbia.edu

To read the archives, consisting of all messages transmitted to and from the
list each month since April 1995, send a message consisting of "get ttm
archive.yymm", where yy is replaced with the last two digits of the year, and
mm is replaced with the month (for example, "get ttm archive.9504" gets the
messages from the first month of the list, April, 1995; "get ttm archive.9602"
gets February 1996, etc.) to:
majordomo@cs.columbia.edu

If you would prefer to converse with a human being, send your email to:
ttm-owner@cs.columbia.edu

If you are interested in receiving a collection of documents concerning the
control of TTM through nutritional and skin care methods, send an email to:
ttm-owner@cs.columbia.edu
 
Please give the FAQ a read, as it attempts to provide new list members with a
running start on the discussions on the list. In general, the list membership
is tolerant of "newbies" asking old questions, but will usually respond
privately to such requests, reserving the public list for newer issues.


B) GENERAL GROUND RULES

Three design decisions in creating and maintaining this list may affect your
comfort with it:

1) To ensure speed, this list is not moderated; your mailings are rebroadcast
to the list membership within minutes. However, the list owner retains the
ability to remove from the list anyone abusing it.

2) To provide some degree of discretion, only members of the list can see the
mail addresses of other members, or retrieve old mailings from the archives
(by using the "who" and "get" commands, explained in the help text you get
from majordomo). However, anyone who has heard about the list can join it.

3) Again for speed, and, more importantly, to help develop a sense of
community, the list does not provide for anonymous joining or anonymous
mailing. Those members wishing to preserve their anonymity can do so by
using a service provider that allows pseudonyms for logon IDs.


C) GENERAL PROCEDURES

Four items of procedure and policy that frequently come up are the following:

1) The amount of messages that you can expect to receive will vary widely. As
of Fall 2000, there are from 450 to 500 people on the list. Some days there
are no messages; on a few days there may be over 20; in general, there are
about 10 per day. For reasons that are not understood, the postings seem to
go through cycles of about four weeks long, first with little activity, then
with a lot of activity. If you aren't getting any messages and you think the
system is broken, send the list owner a private message. Or, just wait a few
days.

2) Civil interactions are presumed. The list owner tends to be a bit lenient,
and is reluctant to interfere with discussions, noting that the list very
often will police itself. However, if in the opinion of the list owner, a
member persists in doing more harm than good (as evidenced by people sending
private mail stating such, or by a rash of unsubscriptions), uncivil posters
will be unsubscribed--usually, but not necessarily, after a warning. In the
five and one-half years of the list, four such people have been forcibly
removed.

3) The posting or forwarding of chain letters, commercial advertisements,
internet hoaxes, urban legends, etc., even if well-intentioned, is forbidden.
Violators will be removed from the list immediately and without warning. Five
such posters have been removed so far. If you have received an email that
concerns you, check first privately with the list owner before you attempt to
post it to the mailer.

4) This is a plain text mailer only! Please do not post using HTML or base64.
Such messages will be returned, as will messages longer than 5000 characters.


D) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This list is owned by John R. Kender, a professor of computer science at
Columbia University in New York City, who became a hair puller at age 13, and
who is currently enjoying a more than eight year remission which he attributes
to nutritional control measures. This automatic list was inspired by the
courage and good cheer of both Christina Pearson, the director of the
Trichotillomania Learning Center, and Bill Sweeney, who bravely started it
manually as a college freshman in 1994.