Awareness e-mail list - problems?

In case you have never joined an e-mail list before, the idea is simple. Members of the list post their messages to an address on a central server (awareness-list at topica.com), which then, within a few minutes, forwards the messages to everyone who has subscribed. Replies to each message are also usually sent to the list. In this way, discussions can be spread over several days. Anyone can join and post to this list.

People are able to 'lurk' on the group without their name being known (other than to the person who set the group up), before they decide to contribute. The title of each forwarded message will start with '[awareness-list]' and will contain instructions at the bottom for how to unsubscribe if and when you want to.

We could possibly have set up our own server to do this, but there are services that already specialise in forwarding and archiving e-mail lists. The Awareness list uses Topica rather than Yahoogroups partly because Topica does not add advertising to each message (yet). However, Topica is a commercial service and may carry advertising by other means, particularly on their website, which you can use to see archived messages. Using the form on the Awareness home page requires you to register on the Topica site and scroll through lots of ads, so here is the preferred method, using e-mail only:

1. Send an e-mail to awareness-list-subscribe@topica.com from your usual email account, or wherever you want messages to go to. Leave the subject and text of the e-mail blank - it's only read by machine. With most software clicking on that link and then pressing 'Send' is sufficient.
2. In a while (possibly a few minutes, possibly hours) you should get an email from 'Topica Support' with the heading 'RESPONSE REQUIRED: Confirm your subscription to awareness-list'.
3. Select this message and send a reply. Leave the subject line as it is.
4. After another delay, you should get another message from Topica Support headed 'Welcome to Awareness-list!'.
5. You can now post messages to the list by emailing awareness-list@topica.com

If you're still having problems, e-mail support@get.topica.com.

I hope the e-mail list is interesting and useful in your personal self-discovery and growth. Please do contribute anything you think may be useful (unless it's commercial spam, in which case watch out).