A-Infos (en) A-infos FAQ Ver 1.0 -- PLEASE READ

["Shawn Ewald" <shawn@wilshire.net>]

________________________________________________
     A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
           http://www.ainfos.ca/
________________________________________________

A-infos FAQ Ver 1.0
4/2/98

Areas covered

1.   What is A-Infos?
2.   How can I subscribe to a-infos?
I'm receiving too much mail. Are there other possibilities?
    2.1 a-infos
    2.2 a-infos24
    2.3 a-infoszine
    2.4 the a-infos language lists
    2.4.1 In January 1998 the language lists were...
    2.4.2 a-infos-misc A-Infos News in Infrequent Languages
    2.5 a-infos-raw All submitted articles
    2.6 The web page
    2.7 Future plans
3.   How do I unsubscribe?
4.   I'd like to see an article translated, can you help?
5.   How do I comment on an article?
6.   How is news selected?
7.   Who runs a-infos?
8.   Should I forward news from a-infos or print it out
9.   How can I help with a-infos?
    9.1 How do I write for a-infos?
    Some formatting hints
    9.2 My group would like to send articles
    9.3 A note on Language
    9.4 A note on Format
    9.5. A note on MIME
    9.6 How do I help to translate articles?
    9.7 How can I help with the web page?
    9.8 How can I help with the web page?

Appendix 1 Historical and non-internet details of the a-infos project
Appendix 2. Language tags for use on a-infos


*** 1 What is A-Infos? ***

A-Infos is a collection of mailing lists and web pages 
aiming to provide news "about and of interest to 
anarchists".  These lists are managed by the people who 
subscribe to the a-infos-org list (see below).  For an 
explanation of the origins of a-infos and of current
a-infos work outside the internet see the appendix of
this FAQ and the web page.

A-Infos is not a commercial project. All the time and 
services which make a-infos possible are donated by 
volunteers from several countries

*** 2 How can I subscribe to a-infos? ***

The subscription to a-infos mailing lists is managed by 
majordomo, which is a common software program for running
such tasks.  If you had contact with a mailing list in the 
past, there's a good chance, that it was operated by the 
same program.  To subscribe to any of these options send a 
message to majordomo@tao.ca with the text:
subscribe <listname>.

***  I'm receiving too much mail. Are there   ***
*                 other possibilities?            *

Because we distribute many news items every day and some 
people can only receive a little email we distribute the 
messages in a variety of different ways.  If you find you 
currently get too much mail from us try changing the way 
you are reading it.  As you go down the options below the 
amount of mail you receive will decrease.  

*** 2.1 a-infos ***
If you are subscribed to a-infos you receive every mail 
item approved by the a-infos collective regardless of 
language.  This is the recommended option to be sure you 
miss no relevant post

*** 2.2 a-infos24 ***

If you are subscribed to this list you receive all the 
message sent to the a-infos list, but rather then getting 
them as they are approved, you get one mail 
message  every 24 hours containing all the messages
for that day.

*** 2.3 a-infozine ***
If you are subscribed to this list you receive all the 
messages sent to the a-infos list, but rather then getting 
them as they are approved, you get a single mail containing 
several messages every time more then 22k of messages are 
ready to be sent out.

*** 2.4 the a-infos language lists ***
As of the start of 1998 we introduced lists for posts in 
one language only.  If you are on any of these lists you 
receive all the posts in that language sent to a-infos.  

We strongly encourage the use of languages apart from 
English on A-Infos news feed.  We hope that this language 
split will encourage subscribers who only read the less 
common languages on a-infos to get others to subscribe 
_and_ to post more news items in their language.

To maintain an awareness of the overall project each of 
these lists receives a daily post that lists the subjects 
of articles sent to the other lists. This can be retrieved 
through the web archive at
http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/ainfos_arch.html

The lists below were chosen because we had received 
regular posts in each of these languages.  When we start 
to receive regular posts in other languages we will create 
a list for these.  For the moment readers/writers of any 
language not listed should also subscribe to a-infos-misc 
(see below)

*** 2.4.1 In January 1998 the language lists were ***

a-infos-de   A-Infos Deutsche News

a-infos-en   A-Infos English News

a-infos-ca   A-Infos Noticias en Castellano

a-infos-fr   A-Infos News Francais

a-infos-it   A-Infos News in Italiano

a-infos-pt   A-Infos Noticias en Portugues

a-infos-sv   A-Infos Svenska Nyheter

*** 2.4.2 a-infos-misc A-Infos News in      ***
*                 Infrequent Languages                *

This is a list for languages that do not yet have there 
own list, so we would encourage anyone who reads a 
language other then those listed above to subscribe to 
this list and to submit news to it.  Once any language on 
this list become frequently used we will start a new 
unique list for it.

*** 2.5 a-infos-raw All submitted articles ***

All posts sent to a-infos are immediately distributed on 
this list without any processing by a-infos.  This 
unfiltered feed is thus the fastest way to receive posts 
but it also means you will receive duplicates, spams and 
any and every other mail sent to a-infos.  We intend to 
keep this list available so that we provide an uncensored 
feed of submitted articles.

*** 2.6 The web page ***
It is also possible to read news sent to a-infos without 
subscribing to any of the lists by visiting the web page 
at http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/ainfos_arch.html

At the moment the web page consists of all the articles 
sent to the a-infos news feed in the order they arrived.  
It is divided into seasonal archives and a couple of 
'special issue' archives from periods where a lot of news 
about a specific struggle was being received (e.g. 
December 1995 strikes in France).

The web page also includes some audio files.

*** 2.7 Future plans ***
We hope to add further options to this list including the 
possibility of a list where you receive a daily menu of 
articles and then specify which ones you wish to see.  A 
long term ambition is to allow people to define areas they 
are interested in and then devise a way to send them 
whatever articles are in these areas.

[NOTE: The project described above is now called a-infos-menu
and it is now in the testng stages, and should be available soon.
Watch for future announcements.]

*** 3 How do I unsubscribe? ***

Just send a message to majordomo@tao.ca with the text
unsubscribe <listname>

*** 4 I'd like to see an article translated,  ***
*              can you help?                    *

We ask people with translation skills to subscribe to 
a-infos-trans (see below).  If you'd like an article on 
a-infos to be translated mail a request to 
a-infos-trans@tao.ca, if your lucky someone will translate 
it.  Please note though like everyone else on a-infos 
these people are volunteers.

*** 5 How do I comment on an article? ***

About a-Infos-d

Many of the news items we carry will be controversial and 
people may want to disagree with the slant they carry.  
Others will be posts that people may want to organize 
actions around.  Sometimes something may get posted that 
people feel is inappropriate and they may want to make 
their feeling known. To create a space for such discussion 
a-infos-d was created to discuss the news on a-infos.  
This list in unmoderated and there are no restrictions on 
posting to it.  So if you want to make comments/proposals 
on a news item you have seen on a-infos you can do so by 
mailing a-infos-d@tao.ca.  (This is the default when you 
reply to a post to any of the feeds.)

To subscribe to a-infos-d send a message to
majordomo@tao.ca
with the contents
subscribe a-infos-d

*** 6 How is news selected? ***

Anyone can send a news item to a-infos@tao.ca or to any 
other feed..  Posts sent to this address are forwarded to 
a list called a-infos-raw where they are looked at by one 
of the a-infos-org collective.  Providing the post is of 
news 'about or of interest to anarchists' and is correctly 
formatted it is then approved for posting to the a-infos 
lists.  Posts form any of the following are automatically 
approved by the clerk and posted to a-infos.

[NOTE: The Clerk is a software program originally designed to 
customize the majordomo list managment software for use in an 
editorial collective, but over time has become much more 
sophisticated and is now used for many other tasks within A-Infos. 
The Clerk was created by A-Infos' resident programmer, Stefan 
Merten.]

* Those appearing in the list of editors (i.e. are 
subscribed to `a-infos-org').

People subscribed to `-org' are "editors", and have all 
powers to control the clerk. The clerk takes this list 
directly from the current `majordomo' list.

* Those appearing in the trusted poster list.

These people are known to have understood the principles of 
the project, and thus need no explicit approval on every 
post. This list at the moment is an own list, but it's 
possible to add mailing lists as a whole as well - e.g.
`a-infos-trans'.

Moreover the editors are considered trusted posters.

Approved posts end up

on a-infos
on a-infozine
on a-infos24
on the appropriate a-infos language list
on the a-infos web page at 
http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/ainfos_arch.html

*** 7 Who runs a-infos? ***

A-Infos-Org

The project is managed by the people who are subscribed to 
a-infos-org.

People, who would like to help in the running of the news 
service in some way, and who describe themselves as an 
anarchist, or others who want to promote a class less 
libertarian society, are welcome to subscribe to this list.

We expect that all members of the a-infos-org collective 
subscribe to anarchist principles of non-authoritarian 
self-governance, free association and mutual aid. We take 
for granted, that members accept responsibility for 
themselves as well as for the collective as a whole, i.e. 
that they try to be constructive for themselves and for the 
common goal as much as possible. In the realm of the 
project members may not promote ideas or activities, which 
are incompatible with anarchism or even opposed to it.

Furthermore to maintain the working atmosphere on the 
list, we expect, that subscribers post a short 
introduction to a-infos-org during the first week after 
joining the list.

----

Posts to a-infos-org generally concern the technical side 
of running the list, notifications of minor changes in 
clerk functioning, a certain amount of chit chat and long 
running debates on how the lists should be structured.  
Because of all this, being on a-Infos-Org means getting 
quite a lot of email and a commitment to doing work for 
the a-infos news service but if you're willing to accept all 
this we not only welcome you we beg you to join and give 
us a hand.

* 8 Should I forward news from a-infos or print it out *

YES

We encourage people to distribute the news they get on A-
Infos to other people both on but particularly off the 
net.  On the net please include the little A-Infos footer 
so that more people can subscribe.  In printed material 
off the net please include at least the web page address 
which is http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/

In particular we encourage anarchist, and related, media 
projects to use news from our news service for re-
publication or on which to base their own 
articles/reports/news items.

To encourage contributors if you reprint an article
it is a nice idea to email them telling them you have
done so.

*** 9 How can I help with a-infos? ***
We want all the a-infos subscribers to become involved in 
a-infos even if this involvement is as little as 
occasionally forwarding interesting articles to friends or 
another mailing list.


*** .1 How do I write for a-infos ***

a-infos-d is for posts that are discussing articles.  
These should not be posted to a-infos as they won't be 
approved.  However we encourage you to write articles for 
a-infos about events that you have a knowledge of either 
because you live near where they are happening or you have 
some expertise.  Some of the finest posts to a-infos have 
been 'eyewitness' accounts of events that reveal aspects 
that the international media have chosen to ignore.  Other 
excellent posts have been about events like anarchist 
gatherings that the media never cover.

Here are some points you may use as a guide if you are 
unsure how to format an article for a-infos.  You 
obviously do not _have_ to follow these.

.1.1. Try to present an accurate picture of what is 
happening, avoid exaggerating numbers of the influence of 
anarchists (if any) in events.
.1.2.  Remember though as an anarchist news service we are 
particularly interested in what local anarchists are 
doing/saying.

.1.3.  Try to keep your sentences short and your account 
broken up into paragraphs of less then three sentences.  
Your first paragraph should summarize the important points 
of your story.

.1.4.  Include your name (or pseudonym), the date the 
article was written and the geographical location (e.g. 
Joe Blogs, London, 4/5/97) at the top of the article, this 
is all information that is useful to people in judging how 
relevant your article is likely to be.  People are more 
inclined to trust an article written by someone whose name 
they recognize who is at or near the even being described 
and where the article is written during or shortly after 
this event.

.1.5.  If you're writing the article for a-infos include the 
words 'Written for a-infos' under the article title.  This 
will encourage other people to write articles for a-infos 
or respond to your article to you or to a-infos-d.

.1.6.  When you have written your article read it over (or 
better still get a friend to do so), and run a spell check 
on it.  Things to look for include:
   a. Sentences or paragraphs that are too long.
   b. quotes or facts that are unsourced (for instance its 
better to say 'according to the Daily News Gary said' or 
'at a rally on the 23/4/5 Gary said' then just Gary said)
  c. local terms or background that you need to explain, 
for instance the initials of a union or political party or 
some locally well known background details that people in 
other parts of the world may be unaware of

.1.7. Try to use a simple language. Due to the 
international nature of the project it's likely that non-
native speakers of the language you're writing in will 
read your text. For these people it's easier to understand 
a language without unusual words.

*** 9.2 My group would like to send articles ***
*           to a-infos, is this OK            *

We encourage anarchist and related projects to send news 
to a-infos, this was one of the primary ideas behind a-
infos, we distribute news rather then produce it. A-Infos 
prefers to concentrate on news but occasional historical and 
theoretical articles are also welcome.  We will also accept news from 
non anarchists that are of 'interest to anarchists'. If you wish to
send an article, please read the note on formatting below.


*** 9.3 A note on Language ***

We accept posts in any language to all the lists.  The 
first part of the subject line of a post should indicate 
what language a post is in e.g. (en) for English.  See the 
appendix at the end for the complete list of languages.  
You don't need to worry about which news list to send the 
posts to, just add the language tag, mail it to
a-infos@tao.ca and we'll do the rest.

*** 9.4 A note on Format ***

Mail sent to a-infos should be sent a plain text (ASCII) 
files which have a return character/line break ever 60 or 
so characters.  Files sent in this format will appear on 
everyone's mailer more or less as you sent them.  Otherwise 
mails that appear fine when sent from your email program 
may appear, when read in another program, as a confusing 
jumble of text.

As an example you can format the posts so that each line 
is only about 60 characters long in MS Word by

1. Do a Select all
2. Change the font to 12 point Courier or any similar 
   typewriter font
3. Drag the page margin to 11cm's so the text forms a long
   narrow column.
4. Save as 'Text only with line breaks"

This will give you a column of text about 60 characters 
wide which is easy to read on all email systems.  The
email version of this document has been formatted like
this.

Leaving an empty line between paragraphs will also make
your mail easier to read.

*** 9.6 A note on MIME  ****

You may send MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) 
messages, but we'll accept only messages formatted as 
readable text (Content-Type: text/plain). Please don't use 
HTML, and please don't add any binary data like pictures, 
sound, or the file format used by some word processor. 
Please don't use multi-part messages.

 Today most mailers accept 8-bit characters, so you may 
send your post in 8-bit format (Content-Transfer-Encoding: 
8bit). It's easier to read than quoted-printable formats, 
and we won't accept any unreadable format (like base64).

*** 9.7 How do I help to translate articles? ***

A-Infos is open to the posting of articles in any language
to the News feed.  We'd like to encourage anyone with
more then one language and some time to translate
articles from a-infos to additional languages and send
these translations to a-infos.

To encourage people to do this we have set up the
list a-infos-trans.  If you are willing to occasionally
translate articles on A-Infos please subscribe to this
list by sending the message 
subscribe a-infos-trans
to 
majordomo@tao.ca

We believe traffic on this list will be low and will 
consist of
1. Announcements by translators of articles they are
working on (to avoid duplication or seek help)
2. Requests from subscribers to a-infos for particular
articles to be translated.
3. Discussion between those subscribed to the list as
to how best to organize this work.

Subscribe to a-info-trans
by sending the message 
subscribe a-infos-trans
to 
majordomo@tao.ca

*** 9.8 How can I help with the web page? ***

a-infos-www

A mailing list has been set up for people interested in 
working on the web page.  If you are willing to work on 
the web page you can subscribe to this list

           *********       *********

Appendix 1 Historical and non-internet details of the
a-infos project

*** How did A-Infos emerge ***

A-Infos was brought to life in 1990 as a result of a 
European conference on the perspectives of international 
anarchist co-operation. The groups and individuals 
participating agreed to create a lose network aiming to 
improve co-operation, communication and the flow of 
information of anarchists world-wide. To achieve this they 
would publish bulletins on a more or less regular basis, 
covering news about or of interest to anarchists from 
their various geographical reasons. Besides this they 
would organize annual international conferences on 
anarchist co-operation. However, the latter have not taken 
place since 1995 despite various attempts at 
organizing them again. Although originally confined to 
Europe, the network quickly grew to an international scale 
with groups from various parts of the world joining. In 
late 1995 some comrades decided to enhance the original 
idea by creating the A-Infos News Service on the internet. For 
more information on the history and aims of A-Infos see 
the web page or write to <i-afd_1@anarch.free.de>"

"*** What does A-Infos do outside the internet ***

A number of groups from various parts of the world publish 
A-Infos bulletins with information from their various 
geographic regions. Some of them also contribute to the
A-Infos e-mail lists, some don't. Other A-Infos groups 
distribute what news they receive and/or publish 
themselves more loosely via regular mail. For addresses of 
these groups write to <i-afd_1@anarch.free.de>"

Appendix 2. Language tags for use on a-infos

aa Afar
ab Abkhazian
af Afrikaans
am Amharic
ar Arabic
as Assamese
ay Aymara
az Azerbaijani

ba Bashkir
be Byelorussian
bg Bulgarian
bh Bihari
bi Bislama
bn Bengali; Bangla
bo Tibetan
br Breton

ca Castellano*
ct Catalan*
co Corsican
cs Czech
cy Welsh

da Danish
de German
dz Bhutani

el Greek
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
eu Basque

fa Persian
fi Finnish
fj Fiji
fo Faeroese
fr French
fy Frisian

ga Irish
gd Scots Gaelic
gl Galician
gn Guarani
gu Gujarati

ha Hausa
hi Hindi
hr Croatian
hu Hungarian
hy Armenian

ia Interlingua
ie Interlingue
ik Inupiak
in Indonesian
is Icelandic
it Italian
iw Hebrew

ja Japanese
ji Yiddish
jw Javanese

ka Georgian
kk Kazakh
kl Greenlandic
km Cambodian
kn Kannada
ko Korean
ks Kashmiri
ku Kurdish
ky Kirghiz

la Latin
ln Lingala
lo Laothian
lt Lithuanian
lv Latvian, Lettish

mg Malagasy
mi Maori
mk Macedonian
ml Malayalam
mn Mongolian
mo Moldavian
mr Marathi
ms Malay
mt Maltese
my Burmese

na Nauru
ne Nepali
nl Dutch
no Norwegian

oc Occitan
om (Afan) Oromo
or Oriya

pa Punjabi
pl Polish
ps Pashto, Pushto
pt Portuguese

qu Quechua

rm Rhaeto-Romance
rn Kirundi
ro Romanian
ru Russian
rw Kinyarwanda

sa Sanskrit
sd Sindhi
sg Sangro
sh Serbo-Croatian
si Singhalese
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
sm Samoan
sn Shona
so Somali
sq Albanian
sr Serbian
ss Siswati
st Sesotho
su Sundanese
sv Swedish
sw Swahili

ta Tamil
te Tegulu
tg Tajik
th Thai
ti Tigrinya
tk Turkmen
tl Tagalog
tn Setswana
to Tonga
tr Turkish
ts Tsonga
tt Tatar
tw Twi

uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek

vi Vietnamese
vo Volapuk

wo Wolof

xh Xhosa

yo Yoruba

zh Chinese
zu Zulu

     ****** A-Infos News Service *****
  News about and of interest to anarchists

Subscribe -> email MAJORDOMO@TAO.CA
             with the message SUBSCRIBE A-INFOS
Info      -> http://www.ainfos.ca/
Reproduce -> please include this section