ESTAT-L is is a forum for ECU faculty, staff & students to ask questions on or about statistical processing and research. Any mail message sent to ESTAT-L will be redistributed to all persons who have joined the list.
To receive ESTAT-L messages, you must first subscribe to the list. To subscribe to the list you should send email to the following address: LISTSERV@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU
If you are using a browser which is already configured to access your mail server and send mail with your name and email address, you can use this hot link to send mail to the listserv:If the browser you are using is not already configured for your mail server and address (which would likely be the case if you were using a friend's computer or a computer in a lab on campus), to use this hot link you would first need to configure the browser for your mail parameters. It would probably be easier just to copy the listserv address to the mail software you usually employ.
In the body of the email you send to the listserv, type this:
SUBSCRIBE ESTAT-L your name
If your name were John Tukey, you would type:
SUBSCRIBE ESTAT-L John Tukey. Include no other text in the email to the listserv, not even a signature file. Send it off. You will receive a reply from the listserv asking you to confirm your subscription. Follow the instructions in that reply and you will be subscribed. You will then receive an informative mailing advising of some of the basics of dealing with listserv machines.
After Subscribing.
Here are a few notes about ECUPSY-L, and a few basic instructions to help you deal successfully with LISTSERV, the program that supports ECUPSY-L and that runs on an NT machine at the computer facilities of East Carolina University. LISTSERV performs functions related to your membership, but the entity that receives mail from you and sends it to all subscribers is known as ESTAT-L and resides at the INTERNET node ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU. More about this later.
LISTSERV.ECU.EDU is an alias for ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU. If you have problems with mail directed to the one node, try using the other node.
This document includes hot mail links to the listowner, the listserv, and the ESTAT-L list. If you are using a browser which is already configured to access your mail server and send mail with your name and email address, you can use these hot links to initiate mail to the listserv, the listowner, or to the list itself (which includes everybody subscribed to the list). If the browser you are using is not already configured for your mail server and address (which would likely be the case if you were using a friend's computer or a computer in a lab on campus), to use this hot link you would first need to configure the browser for your mail parameters. It would probably be easier just to copy the appropriate address to the mail software you usually employ.
The "listowner" is Karl L.Wuensch, whose email address is WuenschK@ECU.edu, and who is a professor in psychology at East Carolina University. He "runs" the list in the sense that he assists people in getting on and off the list, he handles all mailing error problems, and occasionally he attempts to stimulate discussion. ESTAT-L is also supported by the personnel and facilities of the ITCS division of East Carolina University.
ESTAT-L is an unmoderated forum; what is posted is not edited, and censorship has rarely been necessary. Commercial messages, especially "spam," are prohibited.
When you want to "post" a message to your ESTAT-L colleagues, whether as a reply to something you have read on ESTAT-L or to introduce a topic for discussion, you send your message in the usual email way, addressed to: ESTAT-L@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU. Here is a hot mail link to that address: ESTAT-L@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU.
Please note that ESTAT-L is configured in such a way that if you use the reply option on your system's mailer, your reply will go to all of the subscribers to the list. That can be a wonderfully convenient feature or a big embarrassment, depending on how you play it. If you intend your reply to go to only the person who posted the original message, then you need to FORWARD the posted message to that person or address a new letter to just that person. Before you send off your reply, check the header of your about-to-go-out mail to be sure it is directed at the place you want to send it.
ESTAT-L is as effective as its members make it, so the free participation of everyone is hoped for and appreciated.
Participation by writing to the group is really helpful and interesting to all our members. If you have a question, surely there are many other subscribers who have the same question and who would like to read the answers you get. So, if you have a question or view on any aspect of our mutual interest, by all means air it on the list publicly and benefit everyone, rather than just correspond privately. On the other hand, ESTAT-L is a forum for discussion of issues of professional interest, not a "chat" service.
When sending messages to ESTAT-L ("posting"), please make sure that your posting has a clear and descriptive entry on the "Subject:" line of the header.
Please be sure to sign your full name at the bottom of your posting and to include your affiliation(s) and email address. Some subscribers receive their email messages with all the header information stripped away by their local system and therefore cannot know the author of a particular posting without the information being included in the text of the message.
Every posting should begin with a clear introduction of the topic or offer some kind of reference to the topic or a previous posting. Otherwise readers have no way of knowing what you are talking about if you do not reference your posting. Sometimes, there are lapses of several days between postings and the replies that they generate; also, there may be several "strands" of discussion going on simultaneously, which makes unreferenced postings very confusing to readers. A popular way of putting a posting in context is to quote verbatim from the original message. However, it is important to keep the quotations short and relevant. Quoting whole messages, signatures and all, can be inconsiderate. Some mailers routinely quote all of the message to which one is replying. If you use such a mailer, take a moment to highlight the material which need not be quoted and then hit the delete key.
We are not allowed to transmit messages of a commercial or profit-making nature. Sometimes, "commercial" is hard to define, but it can generally be described as something in which the poster or associates have a monetary interest or from which they stand to make money.
Humor is appreciated, but the cryptic, oft-uninflected style of email writing makes it easy to misinterpret attempts at humor, however good-natured. Try not to offend, and, just as importantly, try not to be offended. If you are offended, and feel that you must vent about it, consider responding to the individual poster rather than the entire list. Avoid "flame wars."
ESTAT-L is an "unmoderated" list. This means that what members post goes directly to the membership. I wish to keep the list unmoderated, but to do this, it is important that members respect in their postings the attitudes and sensibilities of all other members.
Just as it is important to try to share public information with the whole group, private correspondence should remain just that: private. Personal messages do not belong in a public forum.
ESTAT-L is a public resource. As such, anything written to ESTAT-L should be considered in the public domain and available for unlimited reproduction. At the same time, please respect any copyright notice attached to a particular item by contacting the author for permission to reproduce the item. The statements on ESTAT-L are strictly personal opinion and do not represent the positions of the organization for which the writer works (unless, of course, someone posts an official document of the organization). Neither the members of ESTAT-L nor any of the organizations providing access to ESTAT-L are responsible for the interpretation or application of the information contained within the discussions.
LISTSERV is the name of the computer program that runs ESTAT-L and takes care of routine membership matters.
The address of LISTSERV, for routine membership commands, send your email to: LISTSERV@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU. If your browser if properly configured, you can use this hot link to initiate the mail: LISTSERV@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU.
Don't confuse the LISTSERV address (to which you send commands) with the address to which you send messages. Messages sent to LISTSERV will not be posted, and commands sent to ESTAT-L will not be executed (but they will be posted to the list, making clear to everybody on the list that you don't understand what you are doing or you were careless -- yes, the listowner does make this sort of mistake now and then).
LISTSERV, the computer program that supports ESTAT-L, will execute various important commands for you. If you have a command that you want LISTSERV to execute for you (such as signing yourself on or off ESTAT-L), follow the instructions given in the next paragraph. When you want to send a command, do not send it to ESTAT-L, where it will merely become public reading matter. Instead, address your command to: LISTSERV@ECUMAIL7.ECU.EDU.
When sending commands to LISTSERV, you can leave the name and subject lines blank because they will be ignored anyway.
* Put the command you select from the list below as the body of message to LISTSERV, not the subject header.
* When LISTSERV receives a command from you, it will send you an acknowledgement and/or a report of what has been done. If you do not receive anything from LISTSERV, then it hasn't received or understood your message. Try again, but remember that the LISTSERV may take several hours to respond.
To join ESTAT-L send the following command:
SUBscribe
ESTAT-L <yourfirstname yourlastname>
For example: SUB ESTAT-L John Tukey
To get a copy of the ESTAT-L membership list: REView ECUPSY-L
This command will yield a membership list alphabetical
by node. To get a copy of the ESTAT-L membership list, alphabetical by
name, send this command to LISTSERV:
REV ESTAT-L (by name
To set yourself to receive no ECUPSY-L mail temporarily: SET ESTAT-L NOMAIL
To arrange to receive ECUPSY-L mail again: SET ESTAT-L MAIL
To leave ECUPSY-L permanently: UNSUB ESTAT-L
To find out your subscription settings: QUERY ESTAT-L
To get a short summary of LISTSERV commands: HELP
To get a list of informational files from LISTSERV: INFO
To get a reference card of LISTSERV commands: INFO REFCARD
We have the NOTEBOOK option in effect. That is, every message posted to ESTATL is now archived and can be retrieved by any subscriber at a later time. To get a list of the archive files, send this command: INDEX ESTAT-L to the LISTSERV. The output mailed to you will give you the names of and some details on the archival files. Select the file you wish to retrieve and then send a command like this: GET ESTAT-L LOG9712 -- this would retrieve the messages that were posted to the list in December of 1997.
Maybe there just has not been any activity on the list lately. If you find that you do not receive mail but others have, or you have other reason to suspect a problem, send a QUERY ESTAT-L command to the LISTSERV to determine the status of your subscription. The listowner might have unsubscribed you because your ESTAT-L mail was bouncing back as undeliverable or with "out of office" autoreplies or other error messages, and he got fed up with dealing with all those error messages. Please, if you are going to use "out of office" autoreplies, turn off your ESTAT-L subscription before turning on the "out of office" autoreply. Conditions which can cause mail to bounce back to the listowner include:
1. Your electronic mailbox is/was full and your system refuses to take any more mail for you,
2. There is, or was, a breakdown in the link between ECUMAIL7 and you.
3. You changed addresses, and told the mailer at your old address to forward your mail, but you gave it an incorrect forwarding address. This sort of error gives listowners a real headache.
Back
to the Statistical Resources Page
Contact Information for the Webmaster,
Dr. Karl L. Wuensch
This page most recently revised on
10. December 2005.
