[Last updated on: Sat Jun 2 19:03:20 2001] Welcome to the Joni Mitchell Discussion List - commonly called the JMDL. You are now an official "Jimdle" - a member of the unmoderated discussion of anything and everything related to the life, art, music, and times of Joni Mitchell. You are one of approximately 820 individuals subscribed to the list. We are generally a mature, thoughtful bunch who are mostly supportive of Joni and her work. However, that does not mean we are a bunch of starry-eyed fanatics either. We tend to be appreciative yet curious - critical yet fair - but always tempered with a deep respect for arguably the greatest songwriter on the planet. This email contains a lot of important information that pertains to the function and etiquette of the list. After reading, please file this message and keep for future reference. TO POST A MESSAGE TO THE LIST: To post a message to the list, send your message to . Your message will then be automatically sent to all people currently subscribed to the list. WHEN REPLYING TO THE LIST: One important point to know about replying to messages that you receive from the Joni list: When you hit your reply button (in most cases, depending on how your software is set up) the message will be addressed and sent back to the author of the message, NOT to the discussion list. If you want to reply to the list, you must manually change the address. Just to confuse you, it is just the opposite with the Digest version of the list. LIST ETIQUETTE: As mentioned, this list is unmoderated - that is, no one approves or denies each post, they all make it through unrestricted to the list. Because of this, a few rules of etiquette should be taken into consideration. 1) ALWAYS USE "NJC" IF APPLICABLE!!!!!: This is THE most important thing you will hear about on this list. What is NJC? It stands for "No Joni Content" and should be used as the first three characters of the subject line of any post you send to the list that contains no Joni Mitchell content. For example, if you are responding to a thread on the virtues of Yanni , the subject line of your post should be labeled something like "NJC - Yanni is the greatest." This allows those that aren't interested in this topic to skip it or even delete it without reading it. More importantly, the proper function of the onlyJONI list depends on NJC being in the subject line. Majordomo automatically rejects all posts with NJC in the subject - stopping them before they hit the onlyJONI lists. Your proper use of this will keep the onlyJONI people off your back! 2) Watch your subject lines: When posting, make sure to check your subject line and insure that it is relevant to the post itself. We often see "Re: Joni Mitchell Digest V2001 #212" as the subject line or some other vague or outdated description. There are those on the list who choose to read only those messages whose subject lines appeal to them. If your subject line has nothing to do with your post - you may be causing a lot of unneeded frustration with the other members. 3) "Quote" effectively and efficiently: Quoting is important and encouraged. If you are responding to a message from another member, it is essential that you quote the relevant part of the message so that the rest of the members can follow the thread. As you might expect, there are a number of threads at any given point and, without proper quoting, it is difficult if not impossible to follow the line of thinking. With quoting comes another responsibility, however, and that is to quote only the relevant portion of the message you are responding to. Often, we have seen entire digests copied back to the list when the person could have simply quoted a few lines. Nothing frustrates list members more than having to wade through lines and lines of irrelevant quoted text. 4) Tolerance, tolerance, tolerance: To debate is divine, to personally insult really sucks. We love debate! We love a good conversation - a good discussion of the issues. We do so with respect for all involved. There are people from many countries and many cultures on this list. There are also those who are diplomatic, and those who aren't. There are tall ones and short ones and ... well, you get the idea. We are a very diverse bunch. In a nutshell, respect another's opinion and they will respect yours. It is not acceptable to personally insult someone publicly on the list. If you feel the need to do so, go listen to the "Ladies of the Canyon" album and calm down. If that doesn't work, take your differences off the list! It is quite simple in an email forum to read (or write) a post that invokes a quick, angry response that is later regretted. Email is a unique forum - one in which the intended context or meaning of a post is easily misinterpreted. You may be trying to make a joke and on the other end it is read as being serious. To aide others in understanding your true meaning, you may consider using "emoticons." For example, looked at sideways: :-) is a smile ;-) is a wink :-( is a frown and :-D is a laugh. There are many others that you will discover along the way. If you are new to email discussion lists, this may seem silly at this point. But, I guarantee that you will see the value of them once you've been around awhile! 5) Don't throw "crumbs": People sometimes tend to use the discussion list as a chat room. By this, we mean that they will post a simple "Me too!" or "I agree" in response to someone else's post - and that's it. There are cases where this is appropriate and effective, but mostly it just takes up space and irritates those who oppose NJC. 6) Post from within the ballpark: One of the first lines of this message explains that the JMDL is an unmoderated discussion of anything and everything related to the life, art, music, and times of Joni Mitchell". We don't always talk about Joni but we try to "stay in the ballpark". You will find that many members tolerate and enjoy the NJC on the list while others cringe at it. If the list strays to far from Joni for your tastes, be proactive and introduce a new topic to bring us back home. 7) Please do not post another's private email to the list without their permission. If you feel you are being privately harassed, intimidated, or abused by another list member as a result of a debate or discussion that began on the list, I suggest any or all of these steps: - Ask them to stop. - Ignore them. - Delete their mail unread and/or filter their mail automatically into the trash. At this point, if you feel the harassment, intimidation, or abuse persists and needs to be further addressed: - Contact their ISP and ask for help in stopping the mail. - Email me a representation of the nature of the problem (copies of messages, chronology, etc...) and *CC the offender*. Please do not expect me to get involved and mediate the case. Rather, based on my knowledge of this person's history on the list, I'll make a decision as to their continued status as a member. Hopefully, this will end all but the most severe cases of abuse. In those rare cases, we will need to personally discuss procedures. 8) Be aware of the abbreviations: A lot of people use abbreviations on the list. Here are what some of the more common ones mean: NJC - No Joni Content SJC - Some Joni/Small Joni Content VLJC - Very Little Joni Content IMHO - In My Humble Opinion (sometimes IMO) BTW - By The Way LOL - Laughing Out Loud ROTFL - Rolling On the Floor Laughing NP - Now Playing jimdle - a list member STAS - "Song To A Seagull" LOTC - "Ladies of the Canyon" FTR - "For The Roses" C&S - "Court and Spark" MOA - "Miles of Aisles" THOSL - "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" DJRD - "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" SAL - "Shadows and Light" WTRF - "Wild Things Run Fast" CMIARS - "Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm" DED - "Dog Eat Dog" NRH - "Night Ride Home" TI - "Turbulent Indigo" TTT - "Taming the Tiger" BSN = "Both Sides Now" JONI RESOURCES ON THE WEB: There are a couple of excellent resources on Joni Mitchell to be found on the Internet: Certainly the most complete and informative site is that created by dearly departed Joni expert Wally Breese, now maintained by his friend and collaborator, Jim Johanson. The site contains a lot of original writings and interviews, current news, song lyrics, pictures, and much, much more. Find Wally's site at http://www.jonimitchell.com The Discussion List web site holds information on obtaining the archives from the Discussion List. In addition, you will find a huge collection of magazine and newspaper articles, album reviews, an award-winning guitar tablature section overseen by list member Sue McNamara, a gallery devoted to list members, and much, much more. Find the Discussion List site at http://www.jmdl.com These two sites contain numerous links to many other interesting sites that have Joni Mitchell content. Log on and start exploring! -------- IMPORTANT AND BORING DISCUSSION LIST INFORMATION-------- THE "MAJORDOMO" SYSTEM: The flow of messages to and from the Joni Mitchell Discussion List is managed automatically, without human intervention, by a software system called "majordomo." This system actually recognizes this list as four lists - JONI, JONI-DIGEST, onlyJONI, and onlyJONI-DIGEST. They are mostly identical except for the way in which the messages are received by the subscriber. It is important to understand which list majordomo actually considers you a member of. ---You are subscribed to the JONI list--- In this format, you receive each and every individual post within seconds after they are posted. The list has recently been averaging about 20-40 posts per day. Some find this volume overwhelming. If this applies to you, you have three other list options. 1) You can switch to the onlyJONI list: This list filters out the non-Joni related messages and sends you only those with Joni Mitchell content. It is exactly the same as the JONI list, except that the non-Joni posts are rejected. To switch to this list, send these two lines to : unsubscribe joni subscribe onlyjoni 2) You can switch to the JONI-DIGEST list: This method collects a number of posts, organizes them, and sends them out to you as a single email message about once a day (more often if traffic is particularly heavy). This version includes EVERY post to the list, regardless of the content. To switch to the JONI-DIGEST format, put these two lines in the body of a message and send them to : unsubscribe joni subscribe joni-digest 3) You can subscribe to the onlyJONI-DIGEST list: This method collects only the Joni-content posts, organizes them, and sends them out to you as a single email message about once every other day (more often if traffic is particularly heavy). This version excludes non-Joni content. To switch to the onlyJONI-DIGEST format, put these two lines in the body of a message and send them to : unsubscribe joni subscribe onlyjoni-digest You can remove yourself completely from the JONI list (assuming anyone would ever want to do that!) by sending this one line in the body of a message to : unsubscribe joni Please understand the distinction between the two addresses: will send your message to all the members on the list. is a maintenance address, used for subscribing, unsubscribing, and getting past digests only (explained on the JMDL website). BOUNCED MESSAGES: Almost every list member eventually is the victim of a bounced message. This is a message that is posted to the list but gets kicked back to the list administrator before it makes the list. There are three main reasons that messages bounce. You can prevent your messages from meeting this fate by understanding the three reasons. 1) You may have more than one email address. If so, you need to remember an important point. Your posts will only be accepted by majordomo if you send them from the address that you subscribed with. Before it sends messages out to everyone on the list - majordomo compares the author's address to those that are subscribed. If it doesn't find it - it bounces. In addition, majordomo (being as unforgiving as it is) cannot figure out addresses that are "almost" correct, either. Some email software tends to add a "pop" address to an address. For example, if you subscribed as but your email software is configured as , your messages will bounce. 2) Majordomo cannot understand "html" tags in the mail it processes. Thus, if you have your email software set to send out "styled" or "html" messages, they will most likely bounce. Reconfigure your software if this is the case. 3) Majordomo looks for "administrivia" and bounces such messages. A message sent with any of the following words in the subject or the first five lines of the message will bounce: get help subscribe unsubscribe Majordomo's logic is that these messages are instead intended for the list administrator - thus the bounce. Anything you can do to prevent your messages from bouncing will keep us all a lot happier and less frustrated! That's about it. One of these days this message will include a nice FAQ list with everything you've ever wanted to know about Joni but were afraid to ask. But for now... you'll just have to read the list mail! Welcome aboard! IN A NUTSHELL: To post to the list: send your message to To unsubscribe from the JONI list: send the line "unsubscribe joni" to This list was founded on August 30, 1996 and is owned and operated by Les Irvin, just another Joni fan. If you have questions, problems, or concerns please let me know. I can be reached via email at les@jmdl.com REMEMBER TO USE "NJC"!! SIQUOMB! Isn't she?