The Wisconsin Pagan Mailing List

This page contains the instructions for joining the wi-pagan mailing list, and gives a little bit of the history of the list.

At long last, Wisconsin citizens of an alternative spiritual lifestyle have an automated Majordomo mailing list. Thanks to Wade, who started the list sometime in 1996, I think, by forwarding messages to the members with his Pine email program from the UW Oshkosh campus. No automation, no subscribing. You sent a message to Wade, and he sent it to everybody else. Pretty primitive stuff. When Wade went on vacation, or to one of those Earth First! rallies, the list went quiet and when he got back, we all got bombarded.

When Wade was given the idea, he had hoped to find fifty people. By the time Kevin and his Linux box came along in late 97, membership was hovering around one hundred, and Wade was spending a lot of time forwarding messages. :-)

Now Kevin has graciously donated space on his personal machine to host this list, and we now have a reliable, automated, honest-to-goodness homegrown list to share our feelings and find friends here in the rolling hills of Wisconsin. In 2000, Kevin's server was moved to Dan and Denise's house when Kevin and Lydylyght moved to Madison which meant losing their DSL connection.

List History:

1995 or '96:

The list is begun by Wade, at that time a student at UW Oshkosh. Using his student Unix account and the Pine email program, Wade takes emails from list members and forwards them to the rest of the list. This works fine until the list membership exceeds 100 people.

Late 1997:

Kevin, then a student at UW Madison, offers to host the wiplist on his personal Unix box, using the majordomo listserv program. This takes quite a load off Wade's time and it also answers the question of what will happen when Wade graduates.

2000:

Kevin has moved from Madison to Sheboygan and is now preparing to take a job back in Madison, but is unable to find a DSL connection that is both affordable and able to host the server. Dan and Denise, after checking the terms of service with their own connection, offer to host the server until Kevin and Lydylyght are able to take it back. Soon after that, burdened by other responsibilities, Kevin asks Kyril and Dan to come in as Co-listowners.

2001

The list suffers a temporary outage when Dan and Denise move to a new permanent home. All communication with the server is lost for about sixteen days while the DSL connection suffers setback after setback. On May 15th, service is restored and the list proceeds as usual.

List Guidelines

Subscribing to the main list

To subscribe to the list, send a message to:
wi-pagan-request@paganpaths.org
with the word "subscribe" by itself (without the quotes) in the body. 

To unsubscribe from the list, send a message to:
wi-pagan-request@paganpaths.org
with the word "unsubscribe" by itself (without the quotes) in the body.

Subscribing to the Digest version:

To subscribe to the digest version of the list, send a message to:
wi-pagan-digest-request@paganpaths.org
with the word "subscribe" by itself (without the quotes) in the body. 

To unsubscribe from the digest, send a message to:
wi-pagan-digest-request@paganpaths.org
with the word "unsubscribe" by itself (without the quotes) in the body.

After you subscribe, you will be sent a confirmation message. This is both to ensure that the email address is valid, and to help prevent people from subscribing others to the list without their permission. Follow the instructions in that message (it entails replying to the message with another command). You'll then receive a welcome message containing pertinent information on the list, including instructions for unsubscribing and other important information that should be saved.

Posting a message to the list

Then enjoy the camaraderie. :-)

Blessed Bees,
Dan