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    Introduction
    to
    The Rust List


    What is The Rust List all about?

    Welcome to The Rust List, the International Neil Young On-Line Community - - - devoted to the discussion of Neil Young, his music, and all things related. We welcome your comments on nearly any issue, even if it's only tangentially associated with Neil Young. Only a couple of guidelines apply:

    1. Please don't post LARGE (i.e., over a couple of screens worth) posts that have No Neil Content (NNC). If you have something like that (e.g., a large humorous post) you'd like to share, just post a short description with an offer to directly send a copy to anyone who's interested. The key here is "LARGE". Reasonable size NNC IS acceptable on Rust!

    2. Please don't post NNC posts that're very likely to start long NNC debates (e.g., NNC politics, NNC religion, etc). The key is "NNC" here. Politics, religion, etc, ARE okay as long as they involve Neil, in a more than cursory way. When Neil's NOT involved, there are lots of other discussion venues on the Net where the debate would be right at home.

    Also note that you won't make many friends on Rust if you post tirades (aka flames) against other members of the Rust community. A good practice is to keep in mind The Pledge of Peace and Rust.

    How do I sign up?

    The Rust List is set up to avoid problems if it has to switch servers, by using a permament domain name: RustList.org. The list administrator these days is RE*AC*TOR, (the same person who brings you HyperRust).

    For details about commands to use check this page.

    How do I participate?

    You can "lurk" on the list by just sitting back and watching the incoming mail. You'll see folks interpretting Neil's lyrics. You'll see folks talk about how they, or their spouse, or their kids, got into Neil. You'll see talk about trading live Neil Young tapes. You'll see garbage. You'll see pearls. But best of all, you'll see just what a community we are.

    When you're ready to jump into the discussion, all you do is send a note of your own there. Just address it to: 

       rust@RustList.org
    Then sit back and watch the reaction. Now you're a Rustie!

    But please, take the Pledge of Peace and Rust first...

    What did death have to do with it?

    Occasionally you'll see people refer to Rust as "rust@death". Here's the history on that...

    When Dan Farmer (of SATAN fame) originally created the Rust list in fall of 1992, the system that it ran on was named after one of his cats: Death. The server address at that time was rust@death.corp.sun.com. From time to time the Rusties would wax eloquently on the concept of "rust at death". During those days, the identity of the Rust list became intertwined with rust@death.

    Enterprising Rusties put out a rust@death T-shirt. A tribute tape called rust@death Never Sleeps was produced (followed eventually by another -- Everybody Knows This Is rust@death, and another -- Sleeps With rust@death). The term rust@death became synonymous with "On-line Community of Neil Young Fans".

    Eventually Dan left Sun (though he returned there eventually, then left again) and set up his own system on the Internet called fish.com (he likes fish, too :-) Recognizing the trauma among Rusties that a switch to rust@fish would cause, he quickly arranged for a mail alias of death.fish.com to be activated. rust@death lived!

    Here's a note to the Rust list posted by Dan, when the issue of "why death?" came up, as it periodically did back then... 

    From: zen@flying.fish.com    (note: address no longer valid!)
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 22:01:59 -0800
Subject: The *OFFICIAL* address to post to...

     *** Official administrative note from the list owner ***

For those not seeped in rust mythology... *sigh*...

The *correct* e-mail address is of this mailing list, is, of course,
"rust@death".  Since The original "rust@death.corp.sun.com" no longer
exists, the most suitable address to choose is "rust@death.fish.com".

E-purists and net.weenies will note that that is an MX record to
flying.fish.com, AKA fish.com, AKA lots of stuff, and that all mail
directed to just about anything (except neil_young@fish.com, until he
begs me to get an account here) will eventually get to the list.

But that is irrelevant.

Those who wear their rust@death shirts with pride will always stick
to the religious phrase, er, e-mail address of rust@death.

From the holder of the death flame -

--- d
    Eventually Dan lost "fish.com" in a domestic dispute and rust@death.fish.com "went away" without warning. At that point, to bring life back to rust@death, I arranged for it to be resurrected on pobox.com. This ended up being a disaster, as the pobox systems were totally overloaded and incompetently managed. It stayed there for two months as Rusties gnashed their teeth over lost digests, major posting delays (sometimes stuff would take 3 weeks to pop out!) and numerous bounce-loops.

    After an extensive search for a reasonably priced service with competent administration, The Rust List dodged death and eventually made it to other services, and the permanent domain name of RustList.org was set up, where it sits to this day. "rust@death" has been relegated to RuStory.

    RE*AC*TOR
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