CONFCHEM
Conferences on Chemistry

Anyone may register and participate in these on-line conferences. There are no registration fees. To register and participate subscribe to the CONFCHEM Listserv (see below). The e-mail addresses for the conferences are:

Schedules and session procedures will be posted on the individual Web pages for each conference. For suggestions on organizing a session or authoring a paper see the author notes page.

Subscribing and Unsubscribing

There are two ways to subscribe the CONFCHEM Listserv. Use Method 1 or Method 2.

1. Subscribe via a web page by filling out this form located at this link.
   • You must enter your name and email address. An email will be sent to that address and you must reply to that email within 24 hours.
   • When filling out the form, you have the option of subscribing to the conference in digest mode
   • To Subscribe click "Join the list"
   • To Unsubscribe click "Leave the list"
2. Subscribe via an email sent to Listserv@ualr.edu

   • Send the following Command in the Body of the email

   SUBSCRIBE CONFCHEM your name

   • Send the following Command in the Body of the email

   UNSUBSCRIBE CONFCHEM your name

   • You must use the email account you wish to subscribe

   • Do not send LISTSERV commands to Confchem@ualr.edu
   • Do not include a subject line in the message
   • Do not include a signature file or any text other than the command itself.

Conference Instructions

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR EMAIL CONFERENCES

A. To send comments or questions about a particular topic to all participants, mail your message to:

    CONFCHEM@UALR.EDU

Only messages that are sent from the SAME MAIL ADDRESS from which you subscribed are accepted and distributed to participants.

Please place THE TOPIC IN THE SUBJECT LINE of the message so that participants can more easily sort out different discussion threads.

At the end of your message place YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION AND E-MAIL ADDRESS.

Remember that messages sent to CONFCHEM will be distributed to all participants. As a courtesy to other participants, please keep your messages concise and avoid irrelevant, redundant, and personal comments which are not of general interest. Comments about conference procedure should be directed to Leon Combs (confchem@yahoo.com) or Robert Belford (rebelford@ualr.edu)

B. To send comments or questions privately to another participant, send your message to the participant's e-mail address. On most mail systems, use of the Reply option in responding to a message received from CONFCHEM will send a message to ALL subscribers.

C. To send comments, questions or suggestions about the operation of the conference, send a message to Leon Combs at confchem@yahoo.com.

HELPFUL HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

A. One of the problems with e-mail discussion is sorting out all the overlapping threads of conversation. Placing the topic on the Subject line helps. When you are responding to or asking about a previous message, refer to the message by specifying THE AUTHOR, TIME AND DATE, e.g. John Smith 9-21-99 8:53 EST. If a conference paper is being discussed, include the PAPER NUMBER, YOUR INITIALS and the SUBJECT in the SUBJECT LINE - no more than a total of 38 spaces and characters. For example, P1 AB: The Role of the Course Text.

A very helpful technique is to quote a small passage from that paper or message in your response and to place a ">" character at the beginning of each quoted line, e.g.:

      > We used the . . . so-and-so . . .in order to . . .

      We tried that too, but we found that . . .

The ">" character in this example is an e-mail convention indicating that the particular line is quoted from another message. A quoted passage does not need to be retyped if you saved it on the file system of your computer; just Copy and Paste the desired passage into your message, then type ">" characters in front of each line.

B. Many mail systems have a "Reply" command which saves you the trouble of typing the return address. BE CAREFUL when using the Reply command to reply to messages received from CONFCHEM. Many mail systems interpret the Reply command to mean that your reply is to go to the ENTIRE LIST; everyone sees it. This is often what you want in a public discussion. If, on the other hand, you intend to reply ONLY to one individual and not to the whole list, you have to use the Send or Mail command and type the individual's e-mail address. If you do use the REPLY option, you may wish to CHANGE the SUBJECT LINE (see section A above).

C. If you use your word processor to compose messages off-line, limit your text to "plain ASCII", i.e. don't use special characters that ASCII e-mail can't handle and that other people's computers can't display properly, e.g. Greek characters, special math characters, "curly quotes", subscripts, bullets, em-dashs, the "degree" symbol, arrows, European characters (accents, tilde, umlaut, etc.), control characters (e.g.form-feeds, tabs, escape sequences, etc.). boldface, underlining, or italics. Change the font of the entire text to a mono-spaced font and adjust the margins so that the line length never exceeds 72 characters. If your word processor or text editor is of the type that simulates a left margin by inserting leading spaces in front of each line, set the left margin to zero. Replace tab formatting with spaces. (Remember that the effect of TAB CHARACTERS in a document depends on the position of the TAB STOPS in the reader's editor or terminal program. Format indented lines and tables using spaces, assuming a mono-spaced font.) Save the document in "text only" format with a carriage return at the end of each line. Do not append attachments to your message.

REMEMBER: listserv@ualr.edu for COMMANDS confchem@ualr.edu for MESSAGES