What is ANGENMAP?
ANGENMAP is a mailing list communication channel designed to serve as a
information sharing and discussion channel among researchers in the areas
related but not limited to, animal gene mapping, genetics, genomics, and
bioinformatics. See the initial User Guide
for more details.
When did ANGENMAP start and how does it work?
The ANGENMAP started off in 1993 with a listserv that sends group emails
to members. There are two other components associated with it: a web site
with user manuals and mail archives, and an online member's directory and
web tools, developed in 1997 and 1999 respectively. See
AnGenMap history data for more details.
Why the name "ANGENMAP"?
It is an acronym from An(imal) Gen(e) Map(ping), a term popular in the
early-1990s on genome mapping activities in the animal breeding/genetics
community. The name is preserved although the genome research has evolved
much beyond "mapping".
How can I subscribe to ANGENMAP?
You can sign up the ANGENMAP Members
Dorectory and manage your subscription through your profile manager.
OR
Email a list command to the angenmap-request listserv to add your email
address to the mailing list. This is to simply email a key word "subscribe"
as its "Subject", to the listserv address, as in:
To: angenmap-request@animalgenome.org
Subject: subscribe
You can put "subscribe" in the mail body, otherwise leave the mail body
empty because everything in your mail will be treated by the listserv as
"command" key words.
How can I un-subscribe from ANGENMAP?
You can sign-off the list by managing your profile on the
ANGENMAP Members Dorectory if you
have a directory entry.
OR
To sign off (unsubscribe) from the list, simply send a key word "unsubscribe"
as its "Subject", to the listserv address, like:
To: angenmap-request@animalgenome.org
Subject: unsubscribe
You can put "unsubscribe" in the mail body, otherwise leave the mail body
empty because everything in your mail will be treated by the listserv as
"command" key words. Excessive amount of non-listserv-key-words (such as
a signature) will cause the listserv panic and your mail unprocessed.
Note, never send your "subscribe" email to the list post address because
thousands of people will read your mail and it does actually unsubscribe you.
What is "listserv" and how may I use it?
A listserv is a software that automates many mailing list operations, such
as subscription, unsubscription, process a mail for distribution, retrieve
a posted item from its archive, etc. You can email to the automated listserv
angenmap-request@animalgenome.org with command key words such as
"help", "info", "sub", "unsub", etc as the "Subject" to let it automatically
process your requests. All your interactions with the listserv are via email
of these commands. It always responds to you much faster than a human operator.
More details are described in the User Guide.
Who can post to the ANGENMAP listserv?
All, and only, those legitimately registered users who are currently subscribed to
the list with a valid email address can post directly to the ANGENMAP list.
This helps to maintain the list free from spam emails (given all registered users
are with a good heart for the central theme of ANGENMAP).
What can be posted on ANGENMAP?
Given the scope of ANGENMAP (see #1), the topics can be posted include:
- Scientific questions, replies and discussions on these questions, even debates.
- Academic questions, replies and discussions about ways to learn and teach on
certain or arbitrary subjects
- Research problems - to share the frustrations and solutions
- Information about future scientific conferences, meetings, workshops, short courses
- Job information, include postdoc positions, graduate studentships, etc.
(DO NOT post your resume or looking for job letters here).
- Other related topics that may worth to share with the community
Keep in mind that when you post, over 2000 people will receive your mail. Thus
please keep your message brief and to the points (see #26 for more tips).
DO NOT simply "reply" to a post if you do not really mean to let
2000+ people read it.
How can I post to ANGENMAP list?
You have to send your post to the list as an email. The posted mail has to
come from your email box which is currently subscribed to the list.
If your post to the list does not go through the list smoothly, please see
items 12-16 below.
What's the official language on AnGenMap?
There has not been a set "official language" on AnGenMap. However, while you
may post to AnGenMap in your mother tongue, English is preferred since it is
a lanuage understood by the most members therefore you have a larger audience
to read your post.
I have multiple email boxes. I wish to posts from any of them but
don't want to receive multiple copies of list mails. Is that possible?
Surely it's possible. You can subscribe the email address you want to
receive list mails (this will be called your "primary address"), and add all
other email addresses as "alternative addresses". This can be accomplished by
managing your AnGenMap Directory profile.
Or, you can email all your alternative addresses to the
listmaster for us to add them
for you (this may take time for us to attend each individual requests).
Why the listserv does not allow attachment in the posting mails?
This is part of our efforts to eliminate malicious attachments that may be
passed on to hundreds of users, as well as to accommodate all email reading
software on the internet (e.g. "pine", "mutt", "elm" among others can only
open plain text (ascii) files. Complete plain text mails are also easier for
database archive/ searches.
If you DO have a need to forward a PDF file or a template in DOC or XLS
file format, the preferred practice is to put the file on a web site, and
cite the URL in your mail (e.g. Use the NAGRP File Sharing Platform. See
#13 below for details).
In rare events where a non-plain-text document is necessary to aid the discussions
such as a graph or picture, we can accommodate on case by case basis.
I need to share a PDF (or .doc, .ppt, etc) file as part of my post
to AnGenMap but email attachment is not allowed on the listserv. What can I do?
Yes you are correct, that email attachment is not allowed on posts to AnGenMap.
However now there is a good news - we have developed a web based File Sharing
Platform in 2010 to facilitate the sharing of files. Here is how to use it with
AnGenMap posts in 2 simple steps:
- Go to
http://www.animalgenome.org/cgi-bin/util/fileshare
Upload your file
(it will return you a unique URL for downloading it)
- Copy and paste the URL into your email to AnGenMap.
Users reading your email will be able to follow the link (URL) to get the file.
Why the listserv does not allow font formatting in the posting mails
This is called styled text or hyper text (html formatted) mail. HTML content
is often sent as attachment in addition to a regular mail body by some mail software.
The attachment is found the number one vehicle to blame for spreading computer
virus and worms. On a mailing list, even one passage of such mail would mean a
large bad effect. The duplicated email body also adds to the internet traffic
bandwidth.
How can I disable the styled text in my email software?
Usually you can disable such behavior by changing its default settings as in
the most popular email software:
Each email software has a way for users to make this choice. If above suggests does not
solve your problem or your email software is something else, see
"Configuring Mail Clients
to Send Plain ASCII Text" for more information. Or, you may need to consult
your software manual for specifics.
Why my post to the list always gets returned, complaining that my
mail contains "attachments" although I didn't use any attachment?
If you did not send attachment but the listserv complained so, it is most
likely that your email software duplicated the mail body as HTML ("styled
text", or "hyper text") and sent as "attachment" in addition to the normal
plain text mail body.
Sometimes you may not realize but if you have a signature formatted in
style which will be sent as attachment (.html or .doc)
See #15 for helps.
What is "hyper text"? I got a complaint from the listserv - is
it because I have a URL in my email?
Hypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references (hyperlinks) to
other text that the reader can immediately follow, usually by a mouse click.
Hypertext may also contain tables, images, styles (bold, large/small font,
color, italicize, etc) and other presentational devices (movie, music, etc).
A URL or any web link is not a hypertext by itself. Just like any other
text, it can be sent normally as long as they are put as is. For example,
mouse-over the two lines below to see the difference:
Plain text:
http://www.animalgenome.org
Hypertext:
http://www.animalgenome.org
When the above hypertext is viewed with a text editor, this will appear to be:
<a href="http://www.animalgenome.org">http://www.animalgenome.org</a>
Some email software automatically embed URL or email address as hyper text
if you don't specifically set your outgoing mail to be in plain text mode
(see #15 for HOWTO).
What is "plain text"? What's the best practice to format plain
text emails?
In contrast to "hypertext", "plain text" is pure text that does not contain
any text formatting characters. Plain text is our old friend -- it is usually
mono-spaced, type-writer styled. See
HOWTO Edit Messages for many useful hints. If you want to make your
post writing more impressive and effective, please read
How to Write Effective Mailing
List Email and Mailing
List Manners.
Briefly, if you wish to let your text appear in the format as you typed,
these tips may be useful:
- Always separate paragraphs with an empty line
- Start a bullet-point line with a space, or any of these symbols (
o , or
- , or
= , or
+ , or
_ , or
* ) as in:
o Last day for online registration: July 28, 2008.
o The deadline for abstract will be March 5, 2008.
- Abstract must be in English
- Abstract must be within 250 words
- Precede your signature block with a line that start with and contains only
two dashes ("--"), as in:
--
Nick Jr., PhD
Senior Investigator,
Blue's Clues Club,
Animal Kingdom Institute
- You could also keep your paragraph to appear "as is" by leaving two (2)
empty lines before it.
- Do not use underscore ("_")
to form a decorative line, as that's often seen in commercial mail foot
appendix which will be removed by the server.
I sent my post in plain text. But the mail body look screwy
when distributed through the listserv, why?
Traditional plain text format on a computer screen allows 80 characters per
line. Lines longer than 80 characters may or may not be wrapped depending
on the displaying software.
Your text editor may automatically wrap lines when it's longer than your
applications window width when you typed them. In other words, the
line-breaks are not at where it appear on your screen ("soft-break"; it's
on your local viewer only) but at where you hit the "return" ("hard-break";
it's part of the text string). Internally they are sent as long
lines with hard-breaks and shown on other computer screens applying their
line wraps while also displaying your hard-breaks. If the user's text viewer
does not implement a line-wrapper, they will show as longer lines.
To help solving the problem the listserv implemented a line wrapper to remove
"hard-breaks" within a paragraph and implement new breaks pursuing default
80 character per line window width. They should be displayed as plain text
only.
Follow tips in #18 to format a better mail body.
Are there alternatives that I can post to AnGenMap without going
through all the problems with my email software
Yes. In 2007, we developed a web-based post submitter as an alternative
to emails for you to post to AnGenMap. Your post will be displayed "as is"
as shown on the submitting form. You need to login at
http://www.animalgenome.org/community/angenmap/dir
to use it online.
An URL in my post got truncated, why? What can I do?
Sending long URL in email can be a problem not only on AnGenMap, but also in
common email communications, where the "clickable URL" may be truncated, or
some strange characters are inserted, or new-line breaks are forced, that
causes your browser to display errors such as "not found". Often you can
"recover" the URL by copy and paste to piece it back into one single line
from multiple lines for your browser (be sure to take out all white spaces
if there are any). (Very rarely, on some old
browsers, you may need to manually change escaped URL codes back to what they
represent, for example, '%3D' back to '=' sign, '%7E' back to '~' sign, etc.
See
"URL Encoding" for more details.
Since this is a common problem for many, there is a convenient utility on the
internet called TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com/)
which can help you to alias a long URL into a short one to go in your email.
What it does is simply to forward the aliased short URL call to the real page
location. For example by using "http://tinyurl.com/5uql59f" you will come back
to this page.
We also try to fix the archived copy for problems like truncated or broken URL.
Users may find it useful to check out the archived post on the
AnGenMap archive server:
I subscribed to AnGenMap list and receive list mails alright. But
when I try to post to the list, it complains that I am not a subscriber, why?
It's most likely that your mail box may have, externally, different email address
identities, and your mail box receives mails on both but outgoing mail uses only
one. In this case your out-going mail address may not be the same as the one you
used to subscribe to ANGENMAP. For example, while both addresses
smroger@wisc.edu
smroger@vetpath.wisc.edu
are valid for a mail box, however, the sendmail program uses only one of them in
the "From:" mail header for out-going mails. You can find out from your email
software or your mail server configurations.
To solve the problem, you may want to find out which one is currently on the list,
and add the alternative ones to the list so you can post from both addresses (see
#11 above for more) while receive list mails on only one
of them.
I receive AnGenMap list mails. But when I tried to logon the
Member's Directory, it says my email address does not exist, why?
It is is most likely you subscribed to the listserv by emailing to the
"angenmap-request" address, not through the Directory forms.
The Member's Directory is a parallel tool to the listserv, their functions
are coupled in several aspects, but not fully integrated. You
will need to register on the Member's Directory and start to use the web
tools to manage your profiles following
this link.
If you indeed registered with the Member's Directory and are also receiving
list mails, it's most likely that your email address receiving email is
different from the one you registered to the Directory. Please be aware
that even if you use only one single email box, your email address to the
outside world may show up in different variants (see #22
above for more details).
How can I change my email address on AnGenMap list?
You can "change" your email address on the AnGenMap list by two simple steps:
(1) send an "unsubscribe" email to the listserv from your old
address, and (2) send a "subscribe" email to the listserv from
the new address (see #4 and #5 as how to do this).
If you lost access to your old email account, you could email the
listmaster to unsubscribe it.
Actually, if old email account is terminated, the listserv will automatically
remove it upon receiving certain number of bounces.
You can also change the list subscription email address using the member's
direcotry profile management tool (web interfaced).
I already subscribed to AnGenMap by email to the "angenmap-request",
can I switch to managing my subscriptions with the Members Directory web tools?
Yes.
If you already subscribed to the list but not yet on the AnGenMap Members Directory,
you can signup the web form using the
same email address, and start to manage your listserv subscriptions through your
profile web interface.
Tips: How to write effective emails on AnGenMap?
Consider there are over 2000 members on the AnGenMap list, to write effective
discussion emails would help to maintain a useful email list for everyone as
well as meeting your goals effectively. Your own email style is perfectly
fine as long as it matches the level of formality of the AnGenMap audience you
are familiar with. For new, especially first time users of the list, here are
a few gentle tips that may help for an effective post:
- Make a descriptive and meaningful subject ("reply" only to follow the same
topic; Don't start a new topic by hitting the reply button on a unrelated post).
- Write with focus and show your expectations.
- Use plain text and avoid attachments.
Make it easy to read and quick to scan by your readers.
- Format your mail for clarity (e.g. Consider use of greetings and a short
signature to identify yourself; Use a space line between paragraphs; Avoid all
capital or all small letters throughout the entire writing, etc).
- Show respect and restraint (AnGenMap is dedicated to genomics research
topic discussions and related activities; please refrain from posting questions
that can be solved in a Genetics/Genomics 101 classroom).
What is spam email and what's ANGENMAP's policy about it?
Cyber spam are known as unsolicited bulk, junk, or commercial emails.
AnGenMap has zero tolerance on such posts. As only legitimately registered users
can post to the list, we want users to be aware that, any offending user will be
PERMANENTLY removed from AnGenMap AND PROHIBITED from future registration to the
list.
What is the listserv moderated mode and how it affects your list postings?
A mailing list can be in unrestricted, restricted, or moderated
mode in terms of the freedom of user's subscription OR posting activities on the
listserv.
Currently the ANGENMAP list is in post moderated mode, meaning that any user can
freely subscribe to the list, however, the list accepts post only from subscribed users
and all posts are to be reviewed and approved by the list moderator before they can go
out to list members.
A moderated list is better controlled for improved post quality against unwanted mails.
Since the list moderation is performed by a person or persons, users may expect some
delays between a post is sent to the list and the post is sent out to list members
depending on the availability of the moderator(s).
