<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

1. Another Milestone
--------------------

Recently the Celiac List realized another milestone with our
2,000th subscriber.  Currently, we have listmembers in these
countries:

Anguilla, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy,
Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal,
Saint Lucia, Saudi-Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and USA.

The quality of this List is a direct result of each excellent post.
Each of you should be commended for the quality of your individual
posts and especially summarizing private replies back to the List.


2. Assistance Needed
--------------------

In order to continue providing the level of service that you have
grown accustomed to, the Listowners need to solicit some assistance
from list members.  There are many tasks, from updating the FAQ to
maintaining selected reference files, that we would like to see
undertaken, but have been unable to do ourselves due to our workload.
We have volunteers helping with some of these tasks, but we could use
many more.  (For those that don't know:  the operation and management
of the CELIAC List and all its reference files is done entirely by
volunteers.)

Currently we have several people translating selected files into other
languages.  We may never be able to offer a comprehensive understanding
of celiac disease in several languages, but at least we have started.

All levels of computer experience are needed.  We will try to match you
to a task that you feel comfortable performing.  All we need is for you
to step forward and to let us know of your willingness to help.


3. Posting Tips
---------------

Internet e-mail messages have often caused misunderstandings.
Like any written document, e-mail does not give insight into the true
feelings or context behind the written words; it lacks non-verbal clues
such as tone of voice and facial expressions.  In addition e-mail
messages are often composed very quickly, adding to the chance for
misunderstanding.

With the best of intentions our words may come across as an attack
against a poster who is asking for our help.  Our goal is to give
others insight into how to make the best choices.  We can never make
those choices for them.  Also, others may have need of additional
information, such as further ingredient inquiries due to additional
food sensitivity.  Therefore, it is important to give as much reference
information as you can when making a post, such as where you learned
the information, the phone number/address of the manufacturer when
relevant, and for what countries the information applies.

Since we normally do not send messages to ourselves, many subscribers
may not realize how their mail program is formatting messages.  One big
problems is making a one or two sentence reply while including the
complete text of the original poster.  Usually you can selectively
quote a few sentences from the original post to refresh the reader's
memory, thus greatly reducing the overall message length.  When
multipled by the 20 or so posts per day we have, and the 2,000+
subscribers, selectively quoting can result in a significant savings in
the use of the resources so generously donated by St. Johns University
for the CELIAC list.

A simple test to gain knowledge of your mail program is as follows.
Write a message and send it to you yourself.  Upon receipt, reply to
yourself with a few short comments.  Many will be surprised at the poor
quality of the resulting message.


4. Junk and Personal E-mail
---------------------------

An unfortunate fact of life on the internet is that commercial search
engines "mine" all posts to our List and all other public discussion
groups.  The resulting table of e-mail addresses is rented to those
sending unsolicited e-mails touting their commercial products and
services.  Often the "reply to" address and other identifying addresses
are forged so that one cannot easily complain to the internet service
provider of the junk e-mail originator.

The Listowners are the only individuals with access to the subscriber
list for our group, and of course we will never rent or sell this to
anyone for any reason.  However, we cannot prevent your address from
being "mined" if you post to the list.  We hope that this hassle is
outweighed by the benefits of having your personal questions
answered by 2,000 others, and the benefits you are bringing to the
celiac community from your information.

Since anyone can join our List (or read our posts via newsgroup),
it is always possible that you will get an abrasive private reply to
one of your posts.  While we cannot become internet policemen, if you
write to the listowners at <[log in to unmask]> with
a copy of the post, we will try to do what we can to address any
unpleasant situation.  Fortunately this sort of problem has been rare.

The Listowners

Michael Jones, Orlando, FL USA
http://rdz.stjohns.edu/library/medic/celiac/index.html