The Pit 3.3/4" G.I.Joe mailing list FAQ V3
This is a list of Frequently (and even not-so frequently) Asked Questions about the mailing list at YOJOE.COM. When the word Joe or G.I.Joe is used, it usually refers to the 3.3/4" kind here. This FAQ will be sent sporadically to the list, if there are enough newbies, a problem pops up or if it has been updated. Additionally, this FAQ is available at http://www.yojoe.com/list/faq.html.
Contents :
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A. The Basics
1.I need to behave myself, right?
2. What are some of the terms used?
B. General info
1. Who created the mailing list?
2. Wasn't this mailing list hosted at another place?
3. When was the list created?
4. How do I subscribe/unsubscribe?
5. What is single/digest mode?
6. How do I post a message?
7. How do I reply to just the author then?
8. Who is the list administrator?
9. How many listmembers are there?
C. What do I send/talk about?
1. What can we talk about?
2. What Subject is taboo?
3. So what about 12" Joes?
4. What about G.I.Joe-like toys, like such as the Corps or Bronze Bomber figures?
5. I've written a Joe story, can I post it?
6. I've got a picture of my collection/custom/favorite Joe. can I send it
to the list?
7. Can I use HTML in my posts?
8. What subjects have been done to death?
9. What are "touchy" subjects?
10. What are *VERY* touchy subjects?
D. For sale/trade/wanted
1. I have stuff for sale, for trade/I want to buy/trade stuff. Can I ask
about it here?
E. Miscallenious questions
1. Are there any Hasbro reps on the list?
2. Are there any famous people on the list?
3. What will get me kicked off the list?
4. So an off-topic post/reply will get me kicked off?
5. Why do some of you sometimes pretend to be Cobras? Are some of you nuts?
6. So you guys roleplay?
7. I'd like to read posts from long ago, is this possible?
8. I found some mistakes on yojoe.com/the Bivouac/etc. Should I report them
on the list?
9. Can you give me a list of all listmembers and their email adresses?
10. Are you all Americans?
11. Can you help me ID this figure/vehicle etc. ?
12. What is considered the official RAH contiunuity here? Cartoon or comic?(what is canon?)
13. Have there ever been trolls, and if so, what do we do about them?
14. Is there a chatroom dedicated to this mailing list?
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A. The Basics
--------------------
1. I need to behave myself, right?
Yes, standard netiquette applies here. This means no typing in ALL CAPS, as
this means you are shouting. No use of profanities and no spam. Try to avoid
one-line replies or one word replies (LOL, ROTFLMAO etc.) and the dreaded
"I agree/me too"-two-word reply.
2. What are some of the terms used?
Here's a short list of some of the most frequent terms used :
Canon : That what is considered to have "officially happened" in the history of
something. For example : Some would call all of the comics "canon" I.E. that
what really happened in the Joe universe, others may choose to ignore parts of
the comic or ignore it altogether. (more on that in section E. 12.)
RAH : Real American Hero, what Hasbro called the 3.3/4" Joes.
ARAH : A real american hero : ditto
AF : Action Force, what RAH was called in europe for it's first years.
Prolly : Probably
BTW : By the way
IM(H)O : In my (humble/honest) opinion
LOL : Laughing out loud
ROTFL : Rolling on the floor laughing
RTFF : Read The (Freaking) FAQ
Sig : A signature. A text some people put after their name, could be a qoute,
or an ascii picture, or other info. Yahoogroups automatically ads a sig to all
posts, for example.
Spesh Mish : Special Missions, a subset of RAH comics
MMMMPPPHHHTT (or variations in number of letters) : sticking your tongue out
while making a noise.
Flame : A post that attacks another person
Troll, Trolling : A person who posts messages to a forum with the sole purpose
of generating inflammatory responses and/or slandering somebody.
B. General info
---------------------------
1. Who created the mailing list?
Conor Malone started this mailing list up after meeting several fellow
3.3/4" collectors online.
2. Wasn't this mailing list hosted at another place?
Yes, this list was originally created at best.com and remained there untill the
27th of September 2000. According to Best.com, the harddrive, containing all
mailing lists info crashed, and it wouldn't be replaced, since best.com has
merged with Verio.
As a result, the Pit was destroyed, and we were without a mailing list!
Conor quickly set us up at egroups, though, so just 2 days later, we had the
Pit II, giving us back our daily fix of Joe talk : )
Off course, the pit moved again, without us having anything to do with it. Egroups became part of Yahoo recently, and the pit was automatically moved
to yahoo groups, making it the Pit III , if you will.
3. When was the list created?
On the 21st of October 1996.
The new Pit (unofficially the Pit II) was created on the 29th of September
2000, but since it's, essentially, the same mailing list, the original creation
date still applies.
Same goes for the move to Yahoo....
4. How do I subscribe/unsubscribe?
There are 2 ways to subscribe :
1- You can sign up by email. Just send a blank email to
yojoe-thepit-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
This will allow you to recieve from and post to the mailing list.
2- You can sign up through Yahoo. Go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
And click "subscribe" then follow the instructions there!
The advantage here, is that you'll have full acces to the Pit pages on egroups,
including our very own chatroom, polls and a files section !
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to
yojoe-thepit-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Do NOT send unsubscribe messages to the list itself, as this will accomplish
nothing, except spamming the listmembers.
5. What is single/digest mode?
Single mode means that you will recieve every message send to the list
seperatly.
Digest mode means that you will receive a bunch of messages in one email.
It's usually a daily digest.
6. How do I post a message?
There are 2 ways, first one, the email adress for the list is
yojoe-thepit@yahoogroups.com
Secondly, you can reply to a message send from the list.
IMPORTANT : It doesn't matter if you hit "reply to author" or "reply to all".
In each case, your reply will be send to the entire mailing list!
IMPORTANT 2 : When replying to a post, make sure that you only quote parts of
the original message that are relevant to your reply.
For example : a post may contain 20 lines of text about the origin of
Snake-Eyes, and one line about his favorite snackfood. If , in your reply,
you only talk about snackfood, you should only quote the one line of the
previous text.
This is ESPECIALLY important when replying to a digest. Make sure you only
quote relevant info from a digest. Otherwise everybody will receive an entire
digest they hadn't bargained for, and for digest members, this would double
their download time.
IMPORTANT 2bis : In the same spirit, remember to trim your posts when replying.
This means deleting sigs, superfluous header info and the yahoogroups sig from
the post you're replying to.
Questions 3 to 5 are discussed in more detail on the list homepage :
http://yojoe.com/list/
7. How do I reply to just the author then?
You have to cut and paste, or rewrite his email adress in the header.
It's important to remember this, unless you want your private email send to the
entire list. This will also be viewed as unwanted email, AKA spam.
8. Who is the list administrator/owner ?
Conor Malone,since he created it : ) What he says, goes.
9. Who are the list moderators ?
First and foremost, Conor, off course. : )
He's not alone, though....
Conor has stated that Eugene Son and Timmer should be considered list
moderators . Since Conor can't be expected to be there all the time or read all
messages, he relies on them to keep things in check.
PS : Don't be fooled by the statement on the list page at Yahoogroups that the
Pit is unmoderated, that just means the moderators don't proofread every email
before it is posted.
9. How many listmembers are there?
The exact number changes too often for it to be mentioned here, but at the time
the first Pit shut down, it was about 350 people. For an exact number,
you can check the mailing list page at egroups.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
C. What do I send/talk about?
----------------------------------------
1. What can we talk about?
Anything about, or distinctly related to G.I.Joe : The Real American Hero.
These are the 3.3/4" figures from 1982 to now. This includes, but is not
limited to : toys, comic, cartoon, customs, books, collectibles, rumors,
fan fiction (! more on that later) humor, commercials, catalogs etc... etc. etc.
2. What subject is taboo?
So far, no subject is off limits, as long as it relates to 3.3/4" G.I.Joe.
There are, however some subjects that have been done to death and touchy
subjects.(more on those later)
3. So what about the 12" G.I.Joes?
This is a 3.3/4" Joe specific mailing list. Although the occasional post about
the 12 inchers is allowed, long threads about them are discouraged. You can
assume that people subscribe to talk about 3.3/4" Joes, there are PLENTY of
other forums to discuss 12" Joe. The newsgroup alt.toys.gi-joe for example.
4. What about G.I.Joe-like toys, such as the Corps or Bronze Bomber figures?
Talk about these toy lines is more acceptable, since not only can they interact
with Joes, but many customizers use vehicles/body parts from these lines for
Joe. Additionally, there are toylines whose vehicles can be used for our Joes,
like those from Soldier Force and 21st century toys.
Use moderation, though.
5. I've written a Joe story, can I post it?
Fan Fiction should not be posted to the list, unless it's VERY short.
You can post a message, saying you have written a story, even include a little
teaser/trailer if you want, with a link to the page where it is, or an offer to
send to anybody who requests it.
It's not that we don't like fan fiction, we do, but it would clutter up the
list too much.
It IS acceptable to create a text file in the files section with fan fiction,
though.
6. I've got a picture of my collection/custom/favorite Joe. Can I send it to
the list?
Please do not send any pictures or attachments of any kind to the list.
Not all email programs can read them, and will show them as garbage textfiles.
This will ALWAYS happen in the digests.
The point has become moot now anyway, because of our move to Yahoogroups.
Yahoogroups will filter out any non-text portions of a post before sending it
to the list. In other words, although your post will show up, it will be
without any attachments.
On the other hand, thanks to Yahoogroups, you can put files on the list pages
at egroups under "files". For this, you'll have to sign up through Yahoogroups
though.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
Since our space there is limited, this is not a permanent archive, any moderator
can remove files/folders at his discretion, the pit will be notified well
beforehand, though, so you can back up these files if you want.
Please remember to remove your files after you're satisfied that anybody who
wants to see them has seen them. This way, the page won't become huge.
7.Can I use HTML in my posts?
No, it is not a good idea, because not all email programs can read them, so the
text becomes almost impossible to read.
Like question 6, the point has become moot though, since Yahoogroups will
filter out HTML before sending your post to the list. Your post will appear as
regular text.
8. What subjects have been done to death?
A thread that shows up every now and again is the one asking about who we are,
what age we are, what our favorite Joe, Cobra or vehicle is.
For an answer to these questions, we refer you to the Omega Battalion page,
where all this info has been gathered, not just about us, but about other Joe
fans on the web. If you still want to know more, then you can ask about it : )
It should be noted that the Omega Batalion is being moved and handed down to
another webmaster, not sure when we'll see it again.
The is also a page that features G.I.Joe filecards of several list members
called The Pit!!! (filecards) . Same thing applies here, it's being moved.....
http://members.xoom.com/JoeRollCall/
http://hometown.aol.com/warflight/warflight.html
For the favorite vehicle/figure/episode/comic threads, an annual award show has
been created to shine some light on that : The FLAGGS ! The first ever FLAGGS
are currently available in the files section of the Pit and in the magazine
section of yojoe.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
http://www.yojoe.com
Other threads that show up from time to time are : "What would you like to have
seen made?"
(or the very similar "What should Hasbro make if Joe came back?) and "Who would
you cast in a live action movie?"
Although these 2 questions have been asked several times, the general consensus
is that these threads are STILL fun to participate in, so if you want, give
your take on it.
9. What are "touchy" subjects?
There are several subjects that will spark a heated debate, and might be worth
ignoring, but might also be interesting to bring up again. (if the debate gets
too heated, people will ask to kill it quick)
A subject with particular potential to get nasty is the question : "If the
comic ever comes back, should the Joes have aged?" or questions about aging.
Several people have STRONG feelings about this
either way. (Duke should be 50 or Joes shouldn't age).
Another one is weither or not Duke should be in charge (ordering officers
around) when he is just a sergeant.
Recently, much controversy has been raised about the new 2000 line of RAH
figures, more specifically, about the fact that some of these figures have
"paintwipes". Some people loathe them, some love them.
When it comes to discussing these topics, please try to respect eachother's
opinions.
10. What are *VERY* "touchy" subjects?
These are subjects that are not worth the grief they cause, because threads
will result in people shouting at eachother. For example, there was a question
as to what religious belief several Joes had. One thing led to another, and it
got nasty.
In general, use good judgement when thinking up threads. You can be sure that
any subject about such sensitive topics as religion, POLITICS, the IRA,etc.
will result in flames and ruin the conversations.
There are places on the web to talk about such things, but this list isn't one
of them.
Recently, we've had to make stricter rules, meaning that continued discussion of
such subjects, can lead to removal from the Pit.
D. For sale/For trade/Wanted
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1. I have stuff for sale, for trade/I want to buy/trade stuff.Can I ask about
it here?
Ahh, the great to trade or not to trade debate....
Basically, yes, you can send for sale/for trade/wanted posts here BUT and
that's a huge but, there are several conditions.
1- Professional dealers or businesses are NOT allowed to sell stuff here.This
is a FAN forum.
2- NO LARGE LISTS, of you have a bunch of stuff to sell, send a message saying
just that, with a URL to the for sale list or an offer to send the list to
anybody who requests it.
3- We will only keep tolerating FS/FT posts if they happen OCCASIONALLY.
As to what occasionally means, use good judgement. This means no 3 posts a week
from the same person with stuff for sale, nor does it mean the same for sale
post every week.
And remember , there are other, more appropriate forums for selling/trading,
such as the newsgroup alt.toys.gi-joe.1980s and the classifieds section at
yojoe.com.
http://yojoe.com/cs/classifieds/
Additionally, a mailing list has been created specifically for selling/trading
figures, vehicles, figure/vehicle parts etc. It's called Arlington and can be
found here :
http://www.egroups.com/invite/arlington
E. Miscallenious questions
-------------------------------------
1. Are there any Hasbro reps on the list?
Officially, no.
However, there are people who have strong suspicions that indeed such reps are
among us. We may never know for sure. Believe what you want.
2. Are there any famous people on the list?
Define famous. Tom Cruise famous? Then (probably) not ; )
Famous in the Joe world? Definetely!
Larry Hama, the writer of almost all the G.I.Joe comics and most of the early
filecards is on the list. He subscribes to digest mode and probably doesn't
read every post, so if you ever ask him a question and he doesn't respond,
don't feel bad.
Thomas Wheeler, who wrote part of the filecards for the 97 and 98 Joe
assortment and who helped bring Joe back is also on the list.
And off course a lot of webmasters of many a great Joe site are on the list.
3. What will get me kicked off the list?
Although The moderators have final say in who gets the boot, you will get
kicked off if :
- You are a dealer or business who sells Joes and try to sell on the list.
- You curse a lot or use profantities when chewing somebody out.
- You start a lot of fights/off topic posts.
- You spam us (chain letters, advertisements that have nothing to do with Joe etc.)
- You bring up off topic, touchy subjects. (POLITICS)
In some cases, you will get a warning first, if you persist in bad behaviour
after that, you will find yourself unsubsribed.
4. So an off-topic post or reply will get me kicked off?
No, we are by no means that severe : )
A few words on off-topic posts/replies/discussions :
- Inevitably, there will be threads that wind up off-topic. We generally don't
mind since these threads usually die out reasonably fast. (and may even be
interesting)
- Please remember to put OT in the subject line if you wish to make off-topic
comments.
- IF an OT thread turns into an argument, it's time to let it go. Somebody will
probably ask you to take the argument off-list to private email, in effect
killing the thread.
- If you are asked to kill an OT thread/move it to private email, it's good
nettiquette to do so, especially when asked by a list moderator.
Failure to do so will probably result in a warning from the list moderators.
It's only after these steps have failed to persuade you to kill the tread, that
you'll become a candidate for removal from the mailing list.
5. Why do some of you sometimes pretend to be Cobras? Are some of you nuts?
In a word, yes : )
You will sometimes see posts that make little sense, about conspiracies etc.
It all started long ago with a thread about the most underrated characters.
Scrapiron was brought up, and somebody said that when Scrapiron disappeared,
Metalhead appeared. Could they be the same? It kinda snowballed from there, so
that Scrapiron was the same as Shooter (a non-exsisting Joe) , Scarface (Cobra
courier) etc.
And he shot JFK. Then (later) a list member was accused of being this person,
and the thread just wouldn't die : )
6. So you guys roleplay?
No, actually, it's never happened, we've never had a roleplaying game on the
list, and it would probably not be a good idea to start, as not everybody would
be interested in reading about it.
The conspiracy stuff was just some fun gone wild : )
7. I'd like to read posts from long ago, is this possible?
Yes, on the list homepage at yojoe.com, digests 1 through 750 are available
http://yojoe.com/list/
These are all early digests from our time at Best.com
Also, thanks to our move to Yahoogroups, you can now read older messages on the
mailing list page at Yahoogroups, but only if you subscribe through egroups.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
Additionally, there is a list chronology, listing important,semi-important and
fun events that have happened on/with the list. It's quite out of date now,
though : )
You can email Timmer for a copy :
sky15010@skynet.be
8. I found some mistakes on yojoe.com/the Bivouac/etc. Should I report them on
the list?
It would be better to contact the webmasters directly.
Although any help to improve a site is (usually) appreciated, pointing errors
out in front of over 200 people is bad netiquette : )
9. Can you give me a list of all listmembers and their email adresses?
No, that would be violating their privacy.
10. Are you all Americans?
Heavens, no! Although US citizens make up the majority of the list a good
portion consists of Canadians.
Additionally, there are also people from the UK, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium
and more!
11. Can you help me ID this figure/vehicle etc.?
Sure! Ask away, you'll probably receive answers within hours!
Be as specific as possible when describing what you have, and if possible,
off course, link to a photo of what you have or put it in the files section!
12. What is considered the official RAH continuity here? Cartoon or Comic?
(What is canon?)
Both and neither. Some people prefer the comic, some the cartoon. The list
is far to diverse to make one canon over the other.
You can ask about it, debate about it, and form your own opinion.
Pick whatever you want, or a combination of both, or make up your own
continuity. It's all in good fun : )
13. Have there ever been trolls, and if so, what do we do about them?
Yes, even on this mailing list, trolls have been know to visit us. Fortunately
these trolls are few and far between. Perhaps the most famous troll in the
history of the Pit was one "Yodaboss". Fortunately, unlike most newsgroups , we
can deal with them fast and efficiently. If a troll shows up, the list admins
WILL throw him off once they see the trolling.
To speed this up, you can contact the list admins. (their email adresses are on
yojoe.com.)
14. Is there a chatroom dedicated to this mailing list?
Yes there is! An advantage of switching to Yahoogroups was that we got our own
chatroom, exclusive to list members! There is a catch, though, you have to sign
up through Yahoogroups to have acces to it. Details can be found on the mailing
list page at Yahoogroups.
Please feel free to organise chatsessions whenever you want !
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yojoe-thepit
Created by Tim Timmermans (Timmer)
Approved by Conor Malone.
Contributor : Eugene Son
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