On Tue, 19 Jul 1994 16:40:07 -0700, Anita Cohen-Williams wrote:
>    Someone on my list has sent out a newsletter that they created to the
>entire list. While our list is not the busiest (as of yet), I am unsure of
>whether or not I should permit this sort of thing. Should I poll my
>subscribers? It wasn't really spamming as the newsletter does concern
>historical archaeology, but I don't feel that *my* list should be taken up by
>unasked for items (it took three notes to send, and wasn't formatted
>correctly).
 
I used to send a monthly newsletter to several computer lists.  It was
popular enough that there were complaints when it didn't arrive "on time."
In one sense, everything sent to a list is "unasked for."
 
If the material in the newsletter is appropriate, and it's not unreasonably
long (I'd define the limit of "reasonable" as 10K or so).  I'd let it go
for awhile.  After a few cycles (how frequent is the newsletter?), polling
the list readers might be desirable.
 
Adam Engst's weekly TidBITs is about 32K an issue, so he posts a brief
contents abstract (about 2K) on relevant lists, and TidBITs itself is
distributed by [log in to unmask]
 
If the historical archaeology newsletter is 1) regular, 2) of interest to
many subscribers to your list, but 3) too long for a regular post, perhaps
you can arrange to have it distributed as a 'list' (moderated, with only
the newsletter writer as "editor")?  An advantage of distributing as a list
is back issues are archived for those interested (back issues of my
Vaporware column are available in the info-mac archives even though I
stopped writing it 18 months ago--after 10 years).
 
/s Murphy A. Sewall <[log in to unmask]> (203) 486-2489 voice
   Professor of Marketing                          (203) 486-5246 fax