Sluggy Freelance Mailing List

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A webcomic exists called Sluggy Freelance. It is free and drawn daily by Pete Abrams, and has become Pete's primary source of income. We, the fans of Sluggy Freelance ("Sluggites"), have grown exponentially in numbers since the beginning days of Sluggy. Accordingly, I founded an email-based mailing list a while back, nominally about Sluggy.

The actual content of the list varies hugely -- for example, the biggest thread at the time of this document's composition was about using Kool-Aid as hair dye, although that will almost certainly have changed into a different thread by the time anybody besides myself reads this. Posts about the comic itself, though always welcome, are usually not a major topic of discussion at any given time. There are only a handful of banned topics, and all of them were banned because they have spawned enormous flamewars and are by nature prone to such activity. A high-profile example would be the war between Mr. Terry Austin and some newcomers to our list from the goats-fan list. Mr. Austin was, essentially, booed of the stage by everybody else -- and I do mean everybody.

The basic rule-of-thumb is to try to be a basically decent sort of person. For example, we agreed, via a poll of all members, that we don't care much about swearing and the like, so long as it isn't the entire purpose of the message. In name, I founded and continue to moderate the list, along with several appointed moderators who really do more about it than I do -- for example, Eviliza took over the list FAQ after the aforementioned Mr. Austin left (and continues to do an excellent job!). Eviliza and Drea do most of the actual moderating, because I don't check in with things like that often. If it wasn't for them, Kieran would have had a whole bunch of backlogged messages waiting to be sent while he was put on moderated status, because I often forget to check the messages-to-be-moderated even when I know someone is on moderated status. Our general rule is, if it's not broken, don't fix it -- unless there is a real need to take action, we let things pass by. As Spider Robinson wrote in his story "The Guy With The Eyes" (from Callahan's Crosstime Saloon): "Callahan is tolerant of rannygazoo; he maintains that a bar should be 'merry,' so long as no bones are broken unintentionally." I've never heard or seen the word "rannygazoo" anywhere else, but the point holds true nevertheless: we don't sweat the small stuff.

I am writing this page while off-line, so I will doubtless forget some names here, but here are the on-list nicks and email addresses of all of the moderators I remember, along with any miscellaneous information:

I'll try to update any forgotten, missing or incorrect information -- there's probably some of each -- on the next run through. When I remember to ask Eviliza for the current URL of the list FAQ, I'll post that too, because you should probably read it before posting so you know what's going on.

Some quick notes about the FAQ: New subscribers will automatically be emailed a copy of the FAQ when they join. It is also posted to the list, automatically, every month.

There's currently some debate as to whether we plan to stay with our current host, because our host (eGroups) was acquired recently by Yahoo!, which has a history of screwing up everything it touches. If and when we do move, I intend to leave the old group listed in the Yahoo! directory so that people following outdated links, etc. have a pointer to the new place. At the moment, the way to join is to head here, or to send an email to Sluggy-subscribe@egroups.com. To post, send an email to Sluggy@egroups.com. To unsubscribe, send an email to Sluggy-unsubscribe@egroups.com. Please don't send subscription or removal requests to the list! That kind of thing gets real old real fast. If you're having trouble, email me or one of the other moderators and we'll deal with it by hand.

A final note: Pete used to be a member of the list, but both he and the list were worried about legal troubles like Pete using (even accidentally) an idea for a strip posted by a list member. Pete likes being part of the community, though, so he uses Shirt-Guy Tom as sort of a human filter -- which means, essentially, that Shirt-Guy Tom tells Pete anything important that's posted to the list, and Pete talks to the list through Shirt-Guy Tom. If you have anything really important for Pete, you can send it directly, but don't do it frivolously -- Pete responds to his email personally rather than through an autoresponder, which is great, but he gets a lot of email. Since we like the fact that Pete responds to messages personally, try not to bog him down unless it's necessary.

For those of you who came to this page from a direct link, you should probably head to the main entrance instead, so you get the nav bar and all that good stuff.

Col. Forbin, Ret.	gunther256@yahoo.com	This is me.
Eviliza	I don't remember her new address.	One of the two more high-profile moderators, maintainer of the Sluggy Freelance Mailing List FAQ.
Drea Byrne	drea_@usa.net	The other higher-profile moderator.
Tom Ricket	tricket@home.com	This is Shirt-Guy Tom. He works with Pete on the Sluggy shirts.
David Allen	I don't remember his address.	Of plan9.org publishing fame, he's the one who makes it possible for you to read Sluggy in dead tree-format.
Brian McNett	bmcnett@bigpanda.org	This is really embarrasing, but I'm not sure if I remember what Brian actually does. My memory tells me that he runs the server for the Sluggy MUX, but then again, my memory is often wrong.