Thank you for referencing this document before asking the listowners.
This FAQ page is divided into two parts: Guidelines and Technical Procedures.
Guidelines section
Technical procedures section
It all began in 1995 when Jeff Parke and Allan Berger co-founded the VETPLUS-L e-mail list. The first of its kind, VETPLUS-L allowed professional communication between veterinarians, vet students, clinical staff, and veterinary researchers. VETPLUS-L was a fantastic success. Its rapid growth required nearly continuous evolution.
By 1997, the task of keeping VETPLUS-L operating smoothly became a significant effort and began to accumulate direct costs for software, equipment, and dedicated internet access. Corporate sponsorship and voluntary contributions by list subscribers met operating needs until April of 2000.
VETPLUS-L outgrew its resources in April 2000, necessitating a wholescale move to new software. This split the list into a premium VETPROF service (with much better software and support) and a free VETPLUS version. Parallel services were maintained for almost two years.
By late 2002, most of the list activity was occurring on the supported VETPROF list. While there were a large number of VETPLUS members, the activity on that list was low, and the efforts of maintaining both services was judged to be too burdensome by the list owners. After 6 months of discussion on the lists, VETPLUS was discontinued on January 1, 2003 leaving only the VETPROF version.
How much does it cost?
Consolidating the VETPROF and VETPLUS list has decreased expenses, and allowed
us to decrease the sponsorship donations for several years to $25 US per year.
Detailed payment options can be found here.
New subscribers get an automatic free trial for 6 months before being asked to pay an annual contribution for continued service. This is voluntary, however, we do ask those not willing/able to pay to fill out a hardship form telling us why free access is requested. Veterinary students and people for which US $25 per year creates a bona fide financial hardship can apply for a fee waiver by filling out the form here.
Who are the commercial sponsors, and why don't they
pay the full cost of the list?
We first started trying to attract sponsors in the mid-1990s. At that time
we thought that veterinary supply and service companies would support the
list's operations. While we did get some commercial sponsorship, there was
less corporate interest than we had hoped.
However, there are a handful of companies and businesses that value both the advertising that VETPROF can provide and knowing that they are helping to support international veterinary communication. Those companies pay an annual sponsorship of approximately $500.00, which allows us to reduce the cost to individual users. In exchange for their support, they get to display a logo on our web site at http://www.vetprof.com/sponsors/sponsorspage.html and they also receive periodic advertising in "administrative" messages posted by the listowners. VETPROF would never have survived the late 1990s without these corporate sponsors, and we remain grateful for their continued support.
How does billing work?
At the beginning of the month before your sponsorship or free subscription
expires, we'll send a bill by personal e-mail which contains instructions
for payment. We send a reminder at the beginning of the calendar month in
which your membership expires. We discontinue service at the start of the
calendar month after expiration.
No participant will ever be billed for past services. We have no mechanism to collect fees without your explicit consent. We keep no credit card information or other ways to automatically collect payments. Should you choose not to rejoin the VETPROF list, we will not knowingly continue to send bills, spam, or otherwise pester you. See also security below.
If you're unsure when your membership expires, please email VETPROF managers. Or you can just wait to receive a bill in the month before your current subscription or free trial expires.
Due to attempts by commercial/spamming interests to "invade" the list, we have disabled commands that allow users to retrieve the list of recipients. If you have a specific need, e-mail the list owners and we will try to answer your question(s) about who is on the list. In general we will not give out a subscriber's e-mail addresses or any other personal information, although we may try to contact that person on your behalf to allow them respond to you.
Allan Berger or Jeff Parke can be reached by email VETPROF managers
If you think list security has been breached, we take this stuff seriously. Email VETPROF managers (Jeff or Allan) and we'll look into it post haste.
Yes, Abbreviation Use (AU) is a necessary evil in all technical fields. The international character of VETPROF results in even more AU variants than most other places. We ask that all postings give full wording for abbreviations the first time they are invoked, as in this paragraph's use of "AU."
Found an abbreviation you can't figure out? The Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons maintains an excellent web page at http://www.spvs.org.uk/index.php?page=gca
Lots of chatty personal notes sent to everyone on the list waste resources. We believe most of you are busy professionals. You are a member of VETPROF because it has a high "content-to-fluff" (CTF) ratio. To keep the CTF high, we routinely ask that messages sent to the whole list be addressed the whole list and not individuals. We do not want to have a list composed only of proficient e-mail addicts who can race through 50+ e-mail messages in a couple of minutes, using their delete keys like machine guns.
Therefore it is important for *EVERYONE* to think twice before sending a posting to the whole list. Ask yourself: "Is this something I might better send via personal e-mail?" "Does this utterance I am about to make have a high CTF?" If it's a message that is only likely to interest one or two people, send by private mail directly to those one or two people.
A further suggestion to keep the CTF high:
*Ask* people who post interesting cases to summarize the responses they get when you send them a personal e-mail response. More people doing this will decrease the amount of repetition seen when everyone sends the similar comments to an individual using the entire list as the vehicle for the comment.
Please consider that the cost of e-mail is paid by the recipient, not the sender. Even short one-liners cost a great deal. Those of you who do not pay for e-mail retrieval in a monetary sense and who do not consider wasted time as a real form of payment, please be sensitive to those subscribers in countries where there is no flat rate internet access. If you would not want to pay by the minute to download a particular message, do not post it.
The charter says this list is for discussions of topics of interest in veterinary medicine. While subject to some interpretation, it is a clear enough definition for us. If we can maintain the high quality of the list subscribership by screening members, we assume the list will stay focused and continue to explore new frontiers in international veterinary electronic communications. If discussions stray from topics of interest in veterinary medicine, the list owners will step in to refocus.
In the spring of 1996, we decided to discourage the use of these lists by veterinary students for assigned classwork. This was because the list was inundated with students seeking information for assignments. In at least one instance, instructors have specifically requested students not use the list this way.
We hope students will still feel free to speak up about interesting cases, or ask questions their own curiosity leads them to ask. However if a student is given the assignment: 'Use resources available to you to find out what you can about XYZ....,' VETPROF should not be considered a resource to use.
List messages should be plain text. No colors, italics, underlines, differing font sizes, etc. Also, please do not send file attachments to the list. If you want to post something special, put the information on a web page and send the address of the page to the list. We have an automated web site for image submission, see also "How do I post images to the list?". The list owners can help you with this and provide other types of web space if necessary.
Some e-mail software sends messages in special formats. By far, the biggest offenders are and mail client written by the Microsoft Corporation (M$ Internet Mail, OutLook Express). Unless properly configured, these send HTML formatting codes in their messages. We have filtering installed to try to exclude HTML mail from making it to the list.
If you see formatting in your e-mail message before you send it, the chances are very high that you need to go into "settings" or "preferences" and turn off "rich-text," "HTML," and anything else that looks fancy. Jeff or Allan can try to help you with this, but your local system or network administrator may be the best resource. If you have control over the software your system runs, both Jeff and Allan strongly endorse the Eudora e-mail client. It allows all sorts of nifty things, including message filtering. (Other than being happy users, we have no affiliation with Eudora or Qualcomm.)
On occasion list subscribers need a very specific referral that can only be addressed by a few list members and are not of general interest. The most common example is when a good client is moving and the referring vet wishes to locate a veterinarian for referral. It's a waste of resources to send such a message to the entire list of global veterinarians, so we encourage members to please send such requests to the list owners (email VETPROF managers). Provided we can easily sort our database to identify the likely targets, we will usually send these messages for you by private mail.
On occasion commercial groups wish to contact VETPROF members. Outside organizations are never granted direct access to our subscribers or contact information for list members. For a commercial sponsorship fee, the list owners will forward messages to the list on behalf of these commercial sponsors. These "administrative" commercial messages don't exceed two e-mail messages per month. Our "commercial sponsors" are usually more interested in supporting the profession and the VETPROF list than a direct e-mail sales campaign.
See also security.
We discourage this type of posting because these messages usually appeal to an extremely small group of list members and aren't usually of general interest. Please contact the list owners before sending such a message to the entire list. See also How do I reach a subset of list members.
I still don't get it. How do I contact the list administrators?
Questions, comments, and/or suggestions? E-mail us!
Jeff Parke, DVM, MS
Allan Berger, DVM, PhD
VETPROF co-managers email VETPROF managers
What is a list? How do I send messages to it?
The VETPROF list is a way to send e-mail messages to hundreds of veterinary professionals. "Sending a message to the list" means sending a message to the e-mail address:
vetprof@milepost1.com
This message will go to all of the active members of VETPROF (approximately 500 read their e-mail regularly).
For subscribers who use more than one e-mail address: When sending a message to the list, you must use the same e-mail address that receives VETPROF messages. If you send from an address that is not subscribed to the list, your message will be returned with an explanation of the mistake. Simply re-send the message from your correct (subscribed) e-mail address.
You can also use the WWW interface to post to the list. There is a link for posting found at the archives/settings link, which is:
http://lists.milepost1.com/archives/vetprof.html
See the next item for assigning yourself a password if you haven't already got one.
What is the status of my subscription? How do I check my settings?
The easiest way to check your settings is to go to the web page:
http://lists.milepost1.com/archives/vetprof.html
Click on the choice "Join or leave the list (or change setting)"
Click on "login with your LISTSERV password and update your subscription interactively"
Follow the instructions to get a password if you don't already have one (this can be done very quickly, and you can easily reset your password if you have forgotten an old one). You will get a confirmation e-mail back from the LISTSERV before your password is changed -- follow the instruction in the e-mail message and your password will be set.
Once you have a password, enter you e-mail address and the password. Your settings will magically appear. Explanations of the settings are available on that page as well.
The LISTSERV also supports an e-mail interface for checking and making changes. If you want to use it, you're welcome to. Don't feel badly about being old-fashioned; you're in good company. Send the command "HELP" in the body of an e-mail message to LISTSERV@LISTS.MILEPOST1.COM and you will get instructions by e-mail.
Check your settings by following the instructions above using the http://lists.milepost1.com/archives/vetprof.html web page. It is very possible that your account was reset to "Mail delivery disabled temporarily, NOMAIL". You can easily change it back using this web page.
If the web site says that your e-mail address is "not currently subscribed," then it is likely that your address had errors and was deleted, you unsubscribed accidentally, or we missed an annual sponsorship payment. Please email VETPROF managers and we can trace the problem.
Check your settings by following the instructions above using the http://lists.milepost1.com/archives/vetprof.html web page.
To stop your mail, click the box "Mail delivery disabled temporarily, NOMAIL" and Update options.
This web page also lists e-mail options.
Regular: The list will send a separate message for each VETPROF posting.
Most subscribers use this.
Digest (traditional): The list will send one message a day. That one
message will contain all of the messages from the last 24 hours. This is a
good setting for people who want all of the messages, but prefer them to be
organized in a single message.
Other options: there are several subtle variations on digests, mail headers, and other stuff. These are explained where these other options are listed.
You need to make sure you are sending messages from the same e-mail address that the list sends messages to. If your e-mail address has changed, or if you gave us the incorrect e-mail address when you joined the list, ask the list owners to change your address for you.
How do I change the address that is subscribed to the list?
E-mail the list owners with your request. Be sure to tell us both the old address and the new address (and be sure you tell us which is which).
The last seven years of VETPROF, VETPLUS, and VETPLUS-L messages are on-line and searchable.
Go to http://lists.milepost1.com/archives/vetprof.html. You will have to get a password and log in (explained above for checking settings). You'll find a full set of search options
If you missed mail, you will also see that you can read messages on line. Click on the month you want to read. There are a variety of options for how to order and format the messages in an icon bar at the top of the page. Experiment!
How do I post images to the list?
Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine maintains a site where VETPROF subscribers can submit images. To use submit or view an image, visit http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/ImageArchive/project.asp?ID=1. Use the "Images Submitted to List" link. The user name is "vetplus" and the password is "imageinfo".
If you are sending an e-mail message to the list that references a submitted image, we encourage you to provide the web site address, user name, and password. You can just copy and paste the paragraph immediately above into your e-mail message.
I still don't get it. How do I contact the list administrators?
VETPROF is actively supported by Drs. Jeff Parke and Allan Berger. If you have a question, e-mail us!
Suggestions/questions? Mail us!
Jeff Parke,
Allan Berger, DVM, PhD
VETPROF co-managers