* each subscriber can immediately send a message to all the other subscribers. You don't need to wait for a forwarder to get your message and send it along. That's especially valuable when the forwarder's computer is broken or he's on vacation for two weeks.
* no one person is responsible for keeping club email addresses current. Each subscriber has the obligation of keeping his or her address current in the reflector.
* no one has to take on the responsibility and work of the email forwarder. The reflector does it automatically.
Q. How does someone send, or post, a message to the QTH reflector?
A. To send a message to all the other reflector members, you simply compose your message and send it to nparc@mailman.qth.net
"nparc@mailman.qth.net" is the private, NPARC mailbox on a computer in Delaware which is running special reflector software, called Mailman. When Mailman sees your message, it immediately sends an exact copy (reflects it) to the email address of every other NPARC reflector subscriber.
Q. What is this "computer in Delaware"?
A. A few years ago, a generous ham by the name of Al Waller, K3TKJ, offered to let other hams set up web pages and email reflectors, free of charge, on his home computers. Al's offer has been accepted by hundreds of clubs and individuals. In fact, this NPARC club web site is hosted on one of Al's computers.
Al's system has been so successful that he's had to invest quite a bit of money in better computers and high speed telephone lines. Although the service is still free, Al asks for donations to cover his costs. For the last several years, NPARC has made such a donation in gratitude for the Club web site and reflector.
Q. How much email will I get from the reflector?
A. Not that much usually. It varies of course, but 5 or 6 messages a week is typical. It's hard to imagine that there would ever be a large number of messages each week.
Q. What if I don't like being a subscriber?
A. Just as you elect to subscribe, you can elect to unsubscribe. You can either use the Reflector Info web site, send an email request, or ask the reflector manager to do it for you.
Q. Will I get junk email (spam) through the reflector?
You shouldn't. Only subscribers may send messages to the reflector and to subscribe you must be a club member.
If a non-subscriber tries to send mail to the reflector (i.e. to the "nparc@mailman.qth.net" address), the mail will be "bounced" (rejected) and forwarded to the NPARC reflector manager to deal with. If the rejected submission is truly spam (and not a useful message from a non-subscriber), it will be deleted and you'll never see it.
Conceivably you could get junk mail -- for a short time -- if a non-club member subscribes to the list, which they can do since it is an open list (no approval needed to join). Normally the reflector manager sees all new subscriptions and will challenge and unsubscribe a non-club member. But it's possible that this non-club member could send spam for a short time before he is booted. Note that if this ever becomes a real problem, we will "restrict" the list by requiring that all subscriptions first be approved by the reflector manager. That slows down the new subscription process, so we're trying to avoid that.
Q. How will I know if an email I receive is from the reflector?
A. The easiest way is to check the subject line of the email. If the subject begins with [NPARC], then it probably came from the reflector. To be sure you can check the header of the message. Note the SUBJECT, and (especially) SENDER fields. They should look something like this
Delivered-To: You@yourISP.com
Subject: [NPARC] Meeting Next Monday
Sender: nparc-admin@mailman.qth.net
Those last two lines each have a indicator -- the word NPARC-- telling you the message came from the NPARC reflector.
Q. Can I send email to just a few of the subscribers?
Not through the reflector. Any message you send to the reflector will go to all the other subscribers. If you want to send a "limited distribution" message, you'll need to send it directly to the people you want.
Q. Can outsiders get my email address from the reflector?
It would be hard. Generally, there are only two groups who may see the reflector's list of NPARC subscribers or old messages containing email addresses:
1. Subscribers, i.e. club members -- but they already can get your address from the printed club roster.
2. The Hams who run the QTH computers in Delaware --- and they have publicly declared they will not sell or otherwise release subscriber names. (They've also take other steps to prevent spam; see http://www.qsl.net/spampolicy.html )
There may be some unknown ways for a spammer to access the QSL/QTH records despite the many barriers erected by the QSL/QTH owners, but we hope no spammers would go to such trouble. There are usually much easier ways to get your email address.
Q. Can I get viruses from reflector mail?
A. Not from the email messages themselves, but possibly from a file that may be *attached* to an email message, such as a document or program file. However, not attachments are permitted on the QTH reflector (your message will go through but the attachment will not.)
Q. I submitted a message to the reflector and it went through, but somehow the body of the message was deleted and instead there was a notice that HTML content was removed. What's wrong?
A. Some Email program permit you to use HTML to create special font features (colors, bold, font types) in your email message. You may not have realized that HTML is used to do this. The problem is that QTH does not permit HTML in emails because a.) HTML is often an indication of 'spam', and b.) HTML could conceivable be used by the sender to trigger a virus or other unwanted response by your computer, e.g. directing your browser to some retailer's site.
To fix this problem, you need to turn off HTML in your email program.
