[continued from previous message]

well. MIME content such as V-Cards, and images such as corporate
logos, are also removed.

<li> You may include URLs in your posts so long as they contain a
valid domain name and point to a server which is currently
online and where the page is available for inspection prior to
publication. IP addresses are never allowed in place of domain
names, and the Moderator reserves the right to delete any URL
that does not point to a well-known domain in a free country.

<li> Since some readers use software which cannot automatically wrap
long lines to fit the computer screen, please include a "hard"
newline at the end of every line of your post. Posts that have
"run-on" lines will be either rejected or reformatted, at the
Moderator's option, to comply with this convention.

<li> The "Official" character set of The Telecom Digest is
ISO-8859-1; US-ASCII is also acceptable. If you submit a post
that uses another character set, such as UTF-8, it might be
rejected.

<li> Please do not use "Quoted Printable" encoding. Some Usenet
clients cannot decode it, and that means I must remove it by hand, but if I miss a "Quoted-Prinable" email, and send it out unchanged, that leaves the readers who see it with a jumble of strange characters that they must try
to quess at or interpret by sight.
<p>For example, here's a snippet of an email which was sent to the Telecom Digest:<p>
<p style="color:yellow;background-color:black;padding:0.5em;">iPhone 13 deals are extra aggressive this year, here=E2=80=99s why</p></li>

<li> Any post submitted with base64 or other encoding which isn't
readable "as is" will be rejected.

</ol>

<p class="hanging">Q. Are there any guidelines about the style of posts?</p>

<p class="hanging">A. Yes, and they are listed here. The Moderator reserves the right to
modify non-compliant posts before publication if he chooses.</p>

<p class="fixed"> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7<br />1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890


<ol><li class="fixed">Please remember that The Telecom Digest has a worldwide audience,
and that not all people use the email formatting customs which are
common in the United States, and not all readers have access to
high-definition computer screens that can show hundreds of char-
acters per line, and not all readers have young eyes. The above
ruler is a reminder to keep the lines of your posts within a
seventy-column right margin, so as to allow room for quote marks in
the left margin of followup posts.</li>

<li> Please don't include "ASCII art" in your posts, including
signature lines: don't forget that these sorts of decoration
depend on fixed-width fonts to be readable, and that each
Digest reader gets to choose the font (s)he prefers. For example, a .sig file that looks like the following on your screen ...

<p class="fixed">|*******************|*****************************|
| Bill Horne | Sage, Seer, Soothsayer, and |
| Burnsville, NC | former used-car salesman at |
| 828-536-OhToo64 | Worthington Ford | |*******************|*****************************|</p>

<p>... will look very different on the screen of a user whom has set their email client or browser to use variable-width fonts ...</p>

<p class="bixed">|*******************|*****************************|
| Bill Horne | Sage, Seer, Soothsayer, and |
| Burnsville, NC | former used-car salesman at |
| 828-536-OhToo64 | Worthington Ford | |*******************|*****************************|</p></li>

<li> Please do not use "leetspeak" or other childish misspellings.</li>

<li> Excessive capitalization or using inappropriate mixtures of
upper and lower case is frowned upon.</li>

<li> Please limit the size of ".sig" files, and avoid pretentious
quoting. Less <em><u>IS</u></em> more.</li>
</ol>

<p class="hanging">Q. Does The Telecom Digest accept anonymous posts?


<p class="hanging">A. Sometimes, but reluctantly. Posters who request anonymity must add
the "[anonymous]" tag to the subject line of their posts, and the
Moderator makes a judgment on a case-by-case basis. Posters who
request anonymity will please provide a brief reason for the
request in a clearly-separated section of the email, e.g.,

<p class="fixed">******************************************************************<br />Please publish this anonymously. My country is<br />arresting those who discuss this subject publicly.<br />**********************************************************
********


<p> Keep in mind that, if your request for an anonymous post is
accepted, <STRONG>ALL</STRONG> information which might point to your identity
will be deleted from your post. The post will appear with a
different message-id than the one it arrived with, and all headers
will be stripped, so you must include anything you want published
in the body of your post. Of course, if you request an anonymous
post but you want to include a website address, a product name, or
other items of commercial value, then the post will be evaluated
with an eye toward that and will almost always be rejected.

<p> Don't even <em>think</em> of asking the Moderator to serve as a postman
for encrypted emails: if you want to have someone encrypt their
emails to you, then you must use a publicly-reachable email address
and request encrypted replies in your post. Of course, you'll have
to offer to trade X.509 or PGP keys in private emails, or have a
PGP key available on a public key-server, such as pgp.mit.edu: the
Telecom Digest does <em>not</em> publish PGP keys.


<p class="hanging">Q. May I "spam-proof" my email address?


<p class="hanging">A. Yes. It's OK to make your address "human readable", so that readers
can send replies directly to you, but spam robots can't pick your
address off our website and use it to spam you.

However -

If your email address is indecipherable, then your post will be
reviewed more stringently than posts sent by those who are willing
to receive direct emails. There is, of course, a gray area between
having a "spam-proof" address and having an unusable one, and the
Moderator makes decisions on a case-by-case basis as to whether
posts with invalid email addresses are acceptable.


<p class="hanging">Q. Where are the archives of old posts?


<p class="hanging">A. Some are available on the Telecom Digest website, which is at
<a href="http://www.telecom-digest.org/">http://www.telecom-digest.org/</a>, but editions of the Digest
produced before 2007 might not be online in a format that you can
search or obtain with a web browser. As time allows, the Moderator
is finding ways to make them more easy to use, and I welcome help
with this project.


<p class="hanging">Q. Can we write about things that came before telephones?


<p class="hanging">A. Posts about things like semaphore signaling, Morse Code, The Pony
Express, and Carrier Pigeons are discouraged. Such subjects may,
however, be mentioned by posters who choose to illustrate the
history, technology, regulations, and social forces which formed
the PSTN we use today, but posts may not focus exclusively on
them.


<p class="hanging">Q. Can I post a story about things which might come after telephones?


<p class="hanging">A. Not unless you are speculating in a believable way about the future
direction the PSTN will take. The Telecom Digest is not a venue
for Science Fiction, so if you want to post about phones on other
planets, or other ways of communication which haven't been
discovered yet, then you'll need to find a more appropriate place
for your work.


<p class="hanging">Q. Since the line between "Data" and "Telephone" gets more blurry
every day, how do you draw the line between VoIP services such as
Vonage and Skype, and the more traditional telephone network?


<p class="hanging">A. If it concerns people using electronic means to talk to each other,
it's fair game, provided that the method(s) being used are capable
of connecting to the PSTN or are provided by a recognized common
carrier. When there is room for doubt, each post is judged on its
own merits.


<p class="hanging">Q. If I can sign up to receive each post separately, why is it called
"The Telecom Digest"?


<p class="hanging">A. The original Telecom Digest was a compilation of emails that were
received by the Moderator each day. The Moderator assembled each
day's digest by hand, and sent it out manually, so there was no
other subscription option besides the "digest" version. When The
Telecom Digest was made available to Usenet readers, that changed,
but the original title of the publication remained, so it is still
called "The Telecom Digest".

Up until 2007, the email version of The Telecom Digest was still
assembled by hand each day, and was thus available only in digest
form, even though it was, by that time, sent out using an
automated email robot located at John Levine's server in New
York. The email robot in use is "Sympa", which allows subscribers
to choose either digest or individual emails, and since Usenet
readers already enjoyed the option of seeing individual posts,
Sympa is programmed to give email subscribers the same choice.


<p class="hanging">Q. What are the options available to subscribers using the email
robot?


<p class="hanging">A. There are too many to list here: to get started on them, send a
"plain text" email to <a href="mailto:symp%61%40telecom-digest.org%20(Sympa)?Subject=help&body=quit">sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org</a> with the
word "help" in the subject line.


<p class="hanging">Q. How do I unsubscribe?


<p class="hanging">A. Send an email to <a href="mailto:symp%61%40telecom-digest.org%20(Sympa)?Subject=unsubscribe%20telecom&body=quit">sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org</a>, with the command
"unsubscribe telecom" in the subject line of the message. If you
no longer have access to the email account from which you
subscribed, use the command "unsubscribe telecom
&lt;old.email.address&gt;".

If you don't have the password for an old account, and no longer
have access to it to send emails to the SYMPA robot, then you may
ask the Moderator to intercede and unsubscribe an old address on
your behalf. Such requests are <strong>always</strong> verified.

Please note: the SYMPA robot will <strong><em>AUTOMATICALLY</em></strong> unsubscribe any
email address that is "bouncing" emails <strong><em>FOR ANY REASON</em></strong>. If your
mailbox is full, you might lose your subscription, so <em>please</em> turn
off delivery of the Digest when you go on vacation!


<p class="hanging">Q. How do I turn off delivery of the Telecom Digest while I'm on
vacation?


<p class="hanging">A. You need only send a "set" command to the email robot, with the
appropriate option. See the help file for more info.

<p> Example: if you send an email to <a href="mailto:symp%61%40telecom-digest.org%20(Sympa)?Subject=set%20%2A%20nomail&body=quit">sympa.atsign.telecom-digest.org</a>,
and put

<p class="fixed">set * nomail</P>

<p> ... in the subject line of the message, Sympa will stop delivery
of <strongALL</strong> your subscriptions (Not just the Telecom Digest) until you send
another "set" command to restart them.

<p> Please note that all robot commands need to be confirmed, so
you'll get a "challenge" email from the Sympa robot, containing
instructions on how to confirm the command. If you prefer, you may
send commands that are validated with your Sympa password, and
they will be executed without need for confirmation: see the Sympa
help files for info.

<h3>End of the Telecom Digest FAQ.</h3>
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