Poly List Charter and FAQ List
Send corrections/suggestions/comments to
howard@polyamory.org.
The purpose of this document
is to tell you about the "poly" email list.
It is formulated as a series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
and their answers.
I hope this will help you to determine
whether or not the subject matter is of interest to you.
It also benefits people who are already members;
by answering a number of basic questions in advance,
it prevents them from being asked on the whole list so often
that they become annoying.
Therefore, if you DO subscribe to poly,
please read this entire document before posting your first message.
Index of Topics
The poly list is a group of people who are interested in discussing
extended, multi-adult, non-monogamous intimate relationships.
As such, it covers all the ground from polyfidelity
(a closed, committed relationship in which the members
do not have sex with outsiders) to polyamory
(openly and honestly having having more than one lover at a time,
but allowing those lovers to have other lovers).
The focus is on honest long-term relationships
rather than one-night stands, 'cheating' or
'swinging'.
The poly list replaces a previous list know as 'triples',
which had the same focus. The differences are that poly is
automatically maintained under
listserv, while
triples was being done manually, requiring many hours of work per week.
Also, we hope that the name poly is less likely to confuse
people into thinking that the list is only about threesomes.
The triples list was phased out in early 1995 and no longer exists.
To get on the poly list,
send email to listserv@polyamory.org
including 'subscribe poly <your_real_name>'
in the body (NOT subject) of the email.
(If you mess up, don't worry, listserv will tell you what to do.)
If you ever want to unsubscribe,
send email to listserv@polyamory.org
with the body of the email having a line that says "unsubscribe poly".
DO NOT send email to the entire list, or to me; the former will be
automatically filtered out, and the latter will waste both our times.
Many of the topics that appear on poly
may overlap with the subject matter of other mailing lists
or Usenet news groups.
Here are some:
Other Mailing Lists
(For a full list, consult Stephanie da Silva's list of
Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists.
They even have
the Poly list listed there.)
NOTE: For most of these lists,
to subscribe you can just send email to the address given.
For those whose address begins "listserv" or "majordomo",
however, your mail will be processed by an automatic program.
For listserv, send email to the address given
with the following command in the message body (not subject!):
- SUBSCRIBE list_name your_real_name-no_logins_please
For majordomo, either of the following should work:
- SUBSCRIBE list_name
- SUBSCRIBE list_name email_address
- alternates
- Deals with 'alternate' sexuality.
Some poly-related topics do arise,
but the main focus is on the many different ways
that sex can be manifested.
A moderated digest-format mailing list,
with specific requirements for signing on.
ADDRESS:
alternates-request@apocalypse.org
- amend2-discuss
- amend2-info
- Gay/lesbian/bi legislation
ADDRESS:
majordomo@cs.colorado.edu
- auglbc-l
- Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Community.
ADDRESS:
listserv@auvm.bitnet
- bears
- Gay and Bisexual men.
ADDRESS:
bears-request@spdcc.com
- biact-l
- Bisexual Activists' Discussion List.
ADDRESS:
listserv@brownvm.bitnet
- bifem-l
- Bisexual Women's
ADDRESS:
listserv@brownvm.brown.edu
- bisexu-l
- Bisexual issues, support, discussion, advice, hugs.
One veteran member says
"most of us are there primarily for flirtspace".
- cohousing-l
- Discussion of Cohousing, the name of a type of collaborative housing
that has been developed primarily in Denmark since 1972.
ADDRESS:
listserv@uci.com
- deviants
- Social Deviants
ADDRESS:
deviants-request@csv.warwick.ac.uk
- femail
- Issues of interest to Women
ADDRESS:
femail-request@lucerne.eng.sun.com
- feminism-digest
- soc.feminism echo
ADDRESS:
feminism-digest@ncar.ucar.edu
- feminist
- ALA Feminist Task Force Discussion List
ADDRESS:
listserv@mitvma.bitnet
- femjur
- Discussions and Information About Feminist Legislation
ADDRESS:
listserv@suvm.bitnet
- gay-libn
- The Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual Librarians Network
ADDRESS:
listserv@uscvm.bitnet
- GayNet
- Lesbian and Gay concerns
ADDRESS:
gaynet-request@athena.mit.edu
- gender@indiana.edu
- Gender
ADDRESS:
ericg@indiana.edu
- gender@rpicicge.bitnet
- Communication and gender
ADDRESS:
comserve@rpiecs.bitnet
- libfem
- Liberty and Feminism
ADDRESS:
libfem-request@math.uio.no
- mail-men@usl.com
- Men's issues discussion
ADDRESS:
mail-men-request@attunix.att.com
- ne-social-motss
- North East Gay, Lesbian and Bisexuals
ADDRESS:
ne-social-motss-request@plts.org
- pagant
- Paganism
ADDRESS:
pagan-request@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu
- sappho
- Gay and Bisexual Women
ADDRESS:
sappho-request@sappho.org
- spouse-support
- spouse-support-digest
- Bisexual/Straight Spouse Support.
For straight spouses and their bisexual partners
who are trying to make their marriages survive and thrive.
ADDRESS:
majordomo@texsys.com
- twins
- Twins, Triplets
ADDRESS:
owner-twins@athena.mit.edu
- wiml-l
- Women's issues
ADDRESS:
listserv@iubvm.bitnet
Usenet News Groups
- alt.co-ops
- Discusses co-operative work, housing, food purchase, etc.
- alt.polyamory
- This news group tends to focus more on the polyamory end
of the spectrum. Many poly list members post there.
- alt.personals.poly
- A place for poly-oriented personal ads. This is one of the few
places where posting a blatant want-ad for partners is nominally
OK, although people sometimes still get flamed for it.
- alt.sex.*
- There are a large number of newsgroups devoted to sex and various
subfetishes thereof, too many to list here.
- soc.bi
- soc.motss
- These groups deal with issues of concern to bisexuals and
homosexuals respectively. Many of these issues can also
arise in poly relationships.
NOTE: Newsgroups are NOT mailing lists.
You cannot "join" them.
Either your site has news access to a given group or it doesn't.
You read news with special software such as "rn".
Since this varies from site to site,
contact your system administrator for assistance.
World Wide Web
The following WWW links may be of interest:
That you're not alone, other folks have the same concerns.
And some of the people here have probably been through
a lot of what you're going through now.
No one here will call you 'weird' or 'sick' for thinking
that you can love more than one person at a time.
Sometimes volume gets very low,
even to the point of there being no messages for a week or longer.
If you want to see more, you can always start a discussion yourself.
Or wait for the annual deluge when everyone gets spring fever. :-)
Another possibility
is that your email address stopped working for some reason.
This can be due to local hardware problems, running out of
disk space or quota, or for many other reasons.
People are automatically deleted from the list
if a message to them ever bounces
with certain types of errors (such as "No such user"),
or if certain other classes of errors occur.
If you think this has happened to you,
you should just resubscribe.
The volume may be high at times.
Subscribers to certain online services
may be charged for each message they receive from the Internet,
which can add up pretty quickly.
Please consider this before subscribing.
No, we trust the members to be tasteful and respectful of each other.
So far it hasn't been a major problem -
the worst things that have happened
have been the occasional inappropriate personals ad
or someone sending add-drop requests to the whole list.
Not from Howard.
It's too much work to sort out,
and he's not sure he wants to let newbies know more about old-timers
than old-timers know about newbies anyway.
It's recommended, but not required.
If there's something you've always wanted to know
but been afraid to ask,
this is the place to do it.
No.
We tried that once,
but the general feeling was that the level of protection it gave
wasn't worth the amount of distrust it generated.
Also, there are technical problems if the anonymous posting
is done through the Finnish server or a clone of it.
The following people have helped make this FAQ what it is
(many of them unwittingly!):
- Ken Chaddock, kchaddoc@CSEO/AWSE
- Amanda R. Clark, amarclar@silver.ucs.indiana.edu
- Ellen Dickson, dicksone@qucdn.queensu.ca
- Ert Dredge, ert@genome.wi.mit.edu
- Joe & Jen, alt@mullara.met.unimelb.edu.au
- Shahin Kohan, deleter@netcom.com
- Louise Mallory, lmallory@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
- Glen Martin
- Nightfly, nightfly@netcom.netcom.com
- Ken Olum, kdo@marie.mit.edu
- PHred PSmIth, JXC35@psuvm.psu.edu
- Fritz Sands, fritzs@microsoft.com
- Richard Scott, rscott@mail.coin.missouri.edu
- Beverly Sobelman
- Simon Richardson, simon@onechip.co.uk
Howard A. Landman /
howard@polyamory.org
Last updated 1998 January 5