bikies
This is a very active discussion-oriented list for people who eat
bicycle advocacy for breakfast. The bulk of the traffic is from and
for Bicycle Transportation Alliance
of Dane County activists.
Details on bikies, including how to subscribe, is at
http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies.
Options include receiving messages individually, or a a
single daily digest.
Message are archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/bikies%40danenet.org/ .
bikies is supported financially by, and is
a project of,
the Bicycle Transportation Alliance
of Dane County. List administration has been a volunteer effort
since the list was created by Scott Rose.
In the past, it has been received financial support from the Bicycle Federation of
Wisconsin.
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- What is a listserve ?
- see
background on mailing lists.
- How do I unsubscribe?
- That was explained in your welcome message;
if you don't know where that is,
read this.
- Who reads this list?
- bikies is a closed list - this means that only subscribe members
can read and post messages, and only from the email address they are
subscribed to. However, the archives (see above) are publicly available.
- What are the policies on bikies?
- This is an open forum, with the emphasis on open. Hence there are
no firm policies. However, we expect users to follow general
Netiquette Guidelines , and to read
Mailing List Manners 101.
Some useful tips:
- Avoid using HTML formatting in your message - many mail readers
don't read it, and it makes messages unreadable to them.
Even people with modern email readers but who also are subscribers
to the digest see HTML postings as a near-unreadable chunk of goo.
- Also, if you're replying to a message, trim out all but the most essential bits
of the previous message.
- If your email address is going away,
as a courtesy, take the time to unsubscribe. The list administrator
will appreciate it.
- The best way -- without
exception -- to deal threads of discourse that offend, is to let
them die.
- Don't post stuff to bikies that was only sent to you, personally.
- What are valid topics for bikies?
- Every once in a while, this subject comes up. I think it was best
answered by Scott Rose , who started the list
and maintained it for many years:
bikies is a forum for discussion of bicycle transportation advocacy
issues. It isn't a newsletter, and it isn't a position paper, and it
isn't a press release. It isn't the BTA, and it isn't the BFW. In fact,
the last time I checked, most of the subscribers weren't members of BTA.
It is true that both BTA and BFW have at various times "sponsored" the
list by making small financial contributions.
The idea here is that people will post such stuff as might be
interesting to other bicycle transporation advocates; examples include
announcements of events, reposts from other related lists, and their
opinions on bicycle transportation advocacy issues.
- Joe King (the 2nd list admin), says
As the administrator of this list I'm interested in what members
desire with regard to content. However, those comments or
complaints should be sent to me and not to the list. Discussions
regarding content have proven themselves to be uninteresting to
bike transportation advocates as evidenced by the increase in
unsubscribe requests that always accompany such discussion.
Therefore, the debate currently underway regarding what is on or
off topic is determined to be off topic.
If you questions or comments about the list, contact the list administrator
at: bikies-owner@danenet.org
- What about commercial messages?
- As a general rule, the list admin does not care to
silence any voices. However, probably most members
would prefer not see the list used for advertising.
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- Why is bikies so 'negative'?
- This also comes up frequently. Actually bikies is not all doom and
gloom - there is a lot of humor and good-natured activism. But forgive us
for feeling a bit angry once in a while; it comes from putting up with
near-death experiences on a daily basis. In any case, being forthright
and vocal on issues usually is much more effective than being polite
and non-confrontation.
On the other hand, inflammatory speech can be all heat and no light.
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- Historical background
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Originally, the list began by
Scott Rose at his former
place of employment..
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Later, it was hosted at VeloNet, a non-commercial site that was
bullied out of existence by the fine folks at VeloNews, who claimed
that- I kid you not- all names with the substring "velo" in them that
had anything to do with bicycling were confusingly similar to their
trademark.
Cyber Cyclery- which was handed the resources from VeloNet by
the maintainer- was (and is?) a commercial startup, and started first
charging for the lists, then appending advertisements.
It finally got to
be too much for us, at which point the truly excellent people at Danenet
pointed out that we could host the lists on the same site that hosts the
Bicycling Community Page. Now, Carl at Cyber Cyclery seems to have
thrown in the towel and passed the baton- how's *that* for mixed
metaphors?- to a new group, but has stopped absorbing new mailing list
content.)
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