Changing Your Mail Distribution Topics for Dairy-L Mark Varner (revised 8/13/02) Dairy-L is an electronic information exchange network for issues pertaining to dairy production. All messages are distributed using the topics feature of the listserv software. Each message will be classified according to one or more of eleven different topic areas. You can receive all messages or you can just receive those that contain information pertaining to a specific topic (s) of interest to you. When you subscribe to Dairy-L, you automatically get all topics by default. You can designate your set of topics to whatever you want, and you can delete or add topics as you wish. A list of possible topics is in Table 1 below. Four examples of changing topics are presented. If you receive your Dairy-L messages via digest (one big message per day), selecting only a few topics will not change your digest. Digests are _ALWAYS_ all messages for the last 24 hours. Topics don't affect this. If you want to use topics, then you'll need to set your Dairy-L options to mail. To do this, send a message to the listserv address and put the following line in the body of the message: set Dairy-L Mail You need to do this before making any changes in the topics. Information on Topics and changing Topics ========================================= Table 1. Dairy-L topics and a general description of the area. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Listserv Topic General Area ============== ============ vet Veterinary Medicine, Mastitis, Disease & Health breed Reproduction, Genetics & AI feed Nutrition, Feeding, Forages, Rations & Grazing crop Cropping & Machinery econ Economics, Statistics, Marketing & Dairy Farm Finances eng Buildings, Farm Layout, Stray Voltage & other Dairy Farm Engin. young Heifers and Calves ed Education, Research & Internet mgt Personnel & Management ann Positions, Meetings & other Announcments ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _________________________________________________________________________ Example of going from receiving all topics to receiving all but one topic ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some people might want to get all topics except for one specific area. To stop getting messages on that area is easy. For example, someone might want to get messages related to all topics except those related to economics and milk marketing. To stop getting messages on economics, send an e-mail message to: listserv@listserv.umd.edu Put the following line in the body of the message: set Dairy-L Topics: all -econ This command tells the listserv software that you want to get all topics except for the messages with the econ topic. ________________________________________________________________ Example of going from receiving all topics to receiving only two ---------------------------------------------------------------- Let's take an example of where you only want to get information concerning feeding and youngstock. To change from getting all topics to just getting messages pertaining to feeding and youngstock, send an e-mail message to: listserv@listserv.umd.edu Put the following line in the body of the message: set Dairy-L Topics: feed young You have just replaced the default setting of all for topics to nutrition and heifer. You would modify the set Dairy-L Topics: line to include the topics you wanted to the right of the colon. You would choose from the Dairy-L Topic list in Table 1. Choose only the words in the _LEFT HAND_ column for the topics you want. A description of what each topic entails is in the right hand column of Table 1. This example describes replacing the Dairy-L default topic list (all topics) with a more selective list ________________________________________________________________ Example of adding a Dairy-L topic ---------------------------------------------------------------- Let's take the example of where you wanted to get information concerning nutrition and heifers. Now you'd like to start getting AI information too. To add messages on AI to those on feeding and youngstock, send an e-mail message to: listserv@listserv.umd.edu Put the following line in the body of the message: set Dairy-L Topics: +breed You have just added the topic breed to feed and young. In general, you would modify the set Dairy-L Topics: line to include the topics you wanted to add to the right of the colon and preceed each topic with a + sign. You would choose from the Dairy-L Topic list in Table 1. Choose only the words in the _LEFT HAND_ column for the topics you want. A description of what each topic entails is in the right hand column of Table 1. You can add more than one topic at a time. You must put a + in front of the topic you want to add. An example of adding buildings and veterinary information is below: set Dairy-L Topics: +eng +vet ________________________________________________________________ Example of deleting a Dairy-L topic ---------------------------------------------------------------- Let's take the example of where you wanted to get information concerning feeding, youngstock, buildings and veterinary information. Now you'd like to stop getting youngstock information. To delete youngstock messages, send an e-mail message to: listserv@listserv.umd.edu Put the following line in the body of the message: set Dairy-L Topics: -young You have just deleted the topic youngstock. In general, you would modify the set Dairy-L Topics: line to include the topics you wanted to delete to the right of the colon and preceed each topic with a - sign. You would choose from the Dairy-L Topic list in Table 1. Choose only the words in the _LEFT HAND_ column for the topics you want. A description of what each topic entails is in the right hand column of Table 1. More than one topic can be deleted at a time. To delete youngstock and feeding, you would use the following command: set Dairy-L topics: -young -feed