AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #233, October 20, 1995
John S. James
sci.med.aids is an electronic mailing list which allows you to post information which is then distributed around the world, and likely to reach over 70,000 people. This is a "moderated" newsgroup, meaning that submissions are not sent out until they are approved (by at least two of the five moderators of sci.med.aids).
Most people use sci.med.aids only or mainly to obtain information, not to send it out. But in case you also want to submit material to the thousands of subscribers, we have summarized some of the rules:
To be accepted, submissions must be relevant; sci.med.aids covers topics of interest to people with HIV, their caregivers, service providers, educators, researchers, health officials, and the general public. Unconventional medical or research claims must be accompanied by references to major newspapers or magazines, or to major scientific journals. Opinion/analysis articles are acceptable, but they should not include personal attacks, and should not invoke religion. Submissions must not violate copyright laws. And to avoid inefficiency, they should not include more than 20 percent text from a previous article; instead, it is usually better to tersely summarize the article to which you are responding, in square brackets. Before replying in anger, it is best to wait a day and see what other reactions have been posted. And a great many submissions are rejected just because they would be more appropriately sent to an individual who posted a previous message, or to the moderators of sci.med.aids, instead of going out to 70,000 people. Before submitting articles, one should read sci.med.aids and become familiar with the kinds of material distributed there.
Despite such policies, readers should beware. There is no way to screen out all erroneous or dangerous treatment suggestions, and many messages on this system are from people with an axe to grind.
How to Use sci.med.aids
* Most people read sci.med.aids as a "newsgroup," which is made available by their Internet service provider. If your Internet service provides the sci.med.aids newsgroup feed, the messages will be saved, usually for several months or more, and you can read them whenever you want. It is preferable to receive sci.med.aids this way, as a newsgroup, if that option is available to you.
* If your service provider does not receive sci.med.aids, you might ask them to carry it. Or you could subscribe on your own; then you can get sci.med.aids sent to you by email, whether or not your service provider carries it.
* If you need to subscribe to sci.med.aids, send email with "subscribe aids" (without the quotes) in the body of your email message to: majordomo@wubios.wustl.edu (Note that the character before the '.edu' is the letter 'l', not the number '1'.) The "subject:" field in your message can be left blank.
* If you need to subscribe but would prefer to get all the postings in a 24-hour period sent to you as a single message instead of being sent as separate messages, then send "subscribe aids-digest" in the body of your email to the above email address.
* Note: Previous users, who were already receiving sci.med.aids either through the newsgroup or by email, do not need to subscribe again. They have been switched to the new system automatically.
* If you want to submit your own message to the newsgroup, send your message -- exactly as you want it to appear -- to aids@wubios.wustl.edu DO NOT include comments to the moderators in your message. (Note: This address -- or any other that includes wubios.wustl.edu -- applies to old users and new users alike.)
* To ask questions to the moderators, send them to aids- request@wubios.wustl.edu
* If you have software to access the World Wide Web, you can get the most recent FAQ (frequently asked questions) list for sci.med.aids (and for HIV and AIDS) from http://family.hampshire.edu/aidsfaq/aidsfaq.html
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