V. David Wilcox Fan Resources
The David Wilcox E-mail Forum is a mail server dedicated to discussion of David Wilcox's music. Manager/Administrator of the forum is Clator Butler (the author of this FAQ).
The David Wilcox E-mail Forum is a mail server dedicated to discussion of David Wilcox's music. Manager of the forum is Clator Butler (the author of this FAQ). If you have a question about the list not contained in this FAQ, please send an e-mail to wilcox [at-sign] clator.com. The list is privately funded by Clator Butler with generous donations from a handful of subscribers who have participated in fundraising activities. It is not a completely "official" list, though it has been blessed by David Wilcox and Tom Simonson, and as of late 2004, has even been moved to the davidwilcox.com domain (list.davidwilcox.com, not "www", to be precice).
Participation is totally free. However, if you wish to contribute, simply purchase one or more of Clator's own CDs from the special "Wilcox fundraiser" links at http://www.clator.com/wilcox/ ... proceeds have gone to obtain a private license for Lyris, and will continue to help support hardware and maintenance. Your help is always appreciated.
To subscribe, go to http://list.davidwilcox.com/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=wilcox
(Again, this long URL is vital to the address. We're trying to work with Lyris to simplify the address.)
To manage your account after it is created, go to http://list.davidwilcox.com/read/?forum=wilcox
By default, you will receive messages in real-time (i.e. as they are posted to the list). If you wish to receive all your messages in one daily digest, OR just get a daily listing of subjects and links to those message via the web, please follow these steps:
To send a message to the forum, mail it to wilcox@list.davidwilcox.com. You must be a subscriber to post to the forum.
To unsubscribe, send a blank e-mail to the address that appears in the footer of your received postings.
People who use the list as a forum for non-Wilcox related material, trolling, personal flaming or general all-around rudeness will be barred from the list. Lately I've been pretty lax about enforcing this rule, but the administrator reserves the right to ban anybody at any time for any reason.
Please do not post information you do not know to be factual unless it is first strongly disclaimed. The list is not a rumor source. Asking questions is encouraged. Giving answers, however, should take more thought.
The list has gone through a few hosts in the past. It originated at Clemson University in 1994 after interest was expressed in forming a listserv in the rec.music.folk newsgroup. About a year after Clator Butler graduated from Clemson, the list was taken "off campus" and was hosted at world.std.com for about five years on the majordomo platform. In 2000, it moved to its current host at CTC/VNet on the Lyris platform. In November 2004 it moved to list.davidwilcox.com on a private server with a dedicated Lyris license.
A Not-So Brief History of the Forum -- Revised November 17, 2004
--by Clator Butler
A question asked, simply, am I being sponsored to do this list. The answer, simply, is no.
Back in 1994, when I was a lowly student at Clemson, a bunch of us from this list used to hang out on rec.music.folk. There was a movement to get rec.music.david-wilcox started, and I attempted to do so with whoever the usenet gods were. The answer came back that there needed to be at least 200 posts a day to justify a new newsgroup (at least in the rec. hierarchy). An alternative was suggested ... that we start a listserv instead.
Well, fortunately for all of us, I was editor of Time-Out at the time, and my chief cartoonist was also the system administrator for Clemson's internet systems.
hubcap.clemson.edu was our campus' DEC Alpha machine, which in 1994 was one of very few in existence. Comparing it to today's systems, it looks like Pong in comparison, but it was the fastest thing around in '94.
But I digress ...
Mike Marshall (who to this day still is hubcap@hubcap.clemson.edu) set up the original list. It was basically a simple UNIX remailer and yours truly had to maintain the entire list by hand. It was real-time with no digest option.
This lack of Digest info was the first thing everybody bitched about.
Well, we limped by on Hubcap for a full year after I graduated, but then in 1996 I got word that my account was going to be terminated. This was about the same time I moved to Washington into my first "Power" job. It also meant that I had to start paying for an ISP. Well, I needed an ISP with listserv capabilities to keep this list afloat, so I shopped around and eventually landed on world.std.com per the recommendation of somebody on this list (I'm sorry I don't remember who). world.std.com used Majordomo to run ListServ. There was now a digest version and the world rejoiced.
... for about a week. Then the fussing gradually started again. Now everybody had to maintain their own subscriptions through Majordomo's cryptic email commands. Yours truly no longer maintained the list by hand, something that was simply too hard to do as a side endeavor.
From 1996 to 1999 we sat parked at world.std.com on Majordomo. The Internet was growing by leaps and bounds during this point in history (as was WorldCom's stock price ... funny that). Everybody and their brother were getting email accounts. Technology increased at a geometric rate, and this was largely a good thing. But there are certain drawbacks. One, spam began to (and still does) grow at a geometric rate. Two, HTML emails became all the rage and many email systems began to use HTML Email as the default composition mode.
Oh, did I mention how much the list fussed about people who quoted entire posts only to deliver a two line response?
These are a BAD for a ListServ, so I explained my problem to some of my friends who ran an ISP (VNet) in Charlotte, NC. One of them told me about Lyris, which they host at VNet. It had an ugly but very intuitive Web interface that subscribers could use to manage their account, and let the sysadmin set up filtering rules to help cut down on unwanted behaviors.
Perfect. We now had a system that could let subscribers manage their settings, easily select between real-time and digest, and prevent spam, HTML emails, and long quotes from reaching the list. I moved both clator.com and the Forum to VNet in 1999.
Of course, everybody started fussing about the filters and rules, and derogatorily dubbed it the "List Bot." Though it solved every recurring problem with the old systems, it forces posters to adhere to some simple net-friendly standards.
In 2003, after an outage of several days, it became apparent that the list needed to be moved, so I began a fundraiser program to obtain enough money to purchase a license of Lyris for the list. Enough funds for the license were received in early 2004 and I began the process of procuring a true server-class system, and moving clator.com from my creaker of a desktop machine onto this box and onto a secure ISP (out of my flaky cable connection). Once the box was stable in the new environment, I set out to start testing Lyris and customizing it for the list. Unfortunately, there were numerous delays (some technological and some related to my overwhelmingly busy schedule in 2004). Testing and massaging Lyris and network issues took place off-and-on throughout Summer and early Fall of 2004. Meanwhile, VNet's server did remain up, though outages were noticed from time to time.
To be fair to VNet: The Lyris service was not a supported service once they were bought out by CTC. Their administrator has kept the box up more as a pet project, and we've benefitted from free hosting for more than a year. That said, it was important for us to move to a more stable connection, because I fear that if the box at VNet goes, so does the forum. After a decade, I'd hate for the forum to just vanish.
Hopefully this will be the last home (even if the machine and/or ISP changes) for the forum, and hopefully we have a safe, stable home for the community here for years to come. Thanks to all for your patience during this move -- the benefactors especially, who NEVER got on my case about the delays).
--Clator
The list-bot is not a real entity but a personification of certain list members' frustrations when posts to the Forum bounce. Since the forum is not moderated, certain technical restrictions have been put in place to keep some semblance of sanity on the list.
The four most common causes for bounced posts are:
Quoting more than ten lines of an earlier post: This is considered poor "netiquette." Because every byte takes up bandwidth, unnecessary lines take longer to transmit and download. Repeated lines also are extremely redundant to digest subscribers, who may otherwise be forced to see repeated emails several times in a given day. Since earlier posts have already established the thread, it is recommended that only the most relevant part of an earlier post be quoted, if at all.
Sending mail to the list from an email address that isn't subscribed: The list is set to reject posts from addresses that are not subscribed. This is a very important tool for preventing spam on the list. Email addresses need to be an exact match, though. For example, if you are subcribed as jdoe@xyz.com and your mail program actually identifies you as jdoe@abc.xyz.com, that will not be a match. Also, if you have multiple email addresses, be sure you are sending from the subscribed email. For example, if you are subscribed at jdoe@hotmail.com, be sure you are sending mail from that address and not jdoe@msn.com.
Sending mail with an attachment: The list cannot handle the inclusion of attachments, including v-card signature. Therefore, if a post is made with an attachment, the list will reject it automatically.
An error in transit that is neither the fault of the sender nor the Lyris server: If there is a problem in transit anywhere between the sender's mail server and the list's mail server, that is not the fault of either machine. Remember folks, this is still online communications and stuff happens. If a fiber cut or a router outage knocks out the route from lyris to your mail server, posts from you won't make it to the list and posts from the list won't make it to you until the lines are repaired. Unfortunately, this still happens commonly online, so be wary of blaming the list-bot for internet-related problems.
Sort of. DW's newsletter is called "Midnight Ocean Bonfire." You can get on the distribution list for free by writing to:
Midnight Ocean Bonfire c/o Russell Carter Suite 755 315 W. Ponce de Leon Ave. Decatur, GA 30030
You can obtain updated concert information by calling 828-298-4322. (It may be a long-distance charge, unless you live in Asheville, N.C.)
You may also use the number 800-492-3079 for ordering DW products suring DW products such as tapes, CDs, songbooks, and shortly, videos of the Artist Profile piece. Please don't call this number for tour information.
SUBSCRIBE FOLK_MUSIC Your Full name
What is the David Wilcox Cruise?
In November 2001, David Wilcox took a cruise on the Caribbean with a major cruise liner and fans were invited to join the cruise (at their own cost, of course). Several days of music and hanging out with David Wilcox followed. This was a very successful alternative to the traditional concert setting and a sequel is being considered on a Windjammer cruise, which would allow for more quaint settings than a traditional cruise ship.
Back | FAQ Table of Contents | Next
Do you still have a question that has not been answered? Mail the author at wilcox [at-sign] clator.com (I've removed the at-sign "@" to cut down on spam.)
Prepared by Clator Butler, manager of The David Wilcox E-mail Forum