A-Infos (ia) A-Infos FAQ v2.0

["Anarchist News Distribution (Platform )" <platform@geocities.com>]

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      A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
            http://www.ainfos.ca/
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A-infos FAQ Ver 2.0
24/4/98

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 (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
(below)

*** 2.4.1 In April 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.

*** 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 from any of the following are automatically
posted to a-infos.

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

* 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,  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 sending 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 feed 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

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