WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR THE NEWSGROUP?

1. Be sure to get permission before posting copyright lyrics. Some people who are willing to have their lyrics posted to the newsgroup or to other newsgroups have given permission to be listed in the blanket permission list, which follows this message. This only covers posting to newsgroups/echoes/forums/whatever your service calls them - for any other use use the contact information to get their permission first.
   
   Please do not post anything but unencoded ascii text. Make gifs, wav files etc. available for ftp, f'req, web access or whatever and post a pointer to where they may be found instead.
   
   
2. There exists an archive of songs posted to rec.music.filk, kept as a series of files covering whatever period I happen to have collected them over. Songs are only included by request of the poster - if you wish your song archived please include the phrase "Please Archive" at the beginning of the message, set off by a blank line on either side. (Note - this is meant to avoid including songs posters did NOT want archived. Note that there are other services that archive everything in the newsgroups regardless, so if you don't want them to do so either, be sure to include x-no-archive in your headers!) If you wish all of your songs to be archived, send me a request and I'll add you to the list. The current list consists of:
   
   Joseph Abbott (Fax Paladin), Bruce Adelson, Alexej (Deleter), Dave Aronson, Gregory Baker, Banazir (William Hsu), Barthel aus Pennswald (Kevin D. Knerr, Sr.), David Bell, Deleter (Aleksej), Doug Berry, Joe Bethancourt, ErisGoD (Debra Joseph), Kihe Blackeagle (Mike C. Baker), Jeff Bohnhof, Michelle & Boyd Bottorff, Steve Brinich, Deborah Brown, Rich Brown, Perry Bruns aka DB Cooper aka Mike Boomshadow aka P.F. Bruns, Blind Lemming Chiffon, Terence Chua, Paul Ciszek, Patrick Connors, Robert B. Cooke, Mary Creasey, Brenda Daverin, Martin DeMello, John Robin Devany, Brendan Dillon (antifrance), JP (John) Doyle aka G.T. Blake, Dr Pepper, Gary J. Ehrlich, Justin Eiler (Too Goofy), Richard Eney, Peter Eng, Estron, Harold Feld, Will Frank, Kate Gladstone, Rachael Glass, Lynn Gold, Dan Goodman, Joy Green, J-Mag Guthrie, Doug Hamilton (Geektones), Robin Hayes, Randy Hoffman, Kim Holec, Tom Holt, Mark Horning, Iolanthe, John In Detroit, Mark Kenney, Joe Kesselman, Larry Kirby, Joshua Kronengold, Kylinn, Matt G. Leger, Arthur Levesque, Mark Long, Michael J. Lowrey, Per Malm, Chris Malme, Mark A Mandel, Paul Mangan, Larissa March, Eloise Mason (was Beltz-Decker), Farrell McGovern, Mark D. McKean, MegaMole, Claudia Mellenthin , Mary Mulholland, Ailsa N. Murphy, David Nasset Sr., Erica Neely , Benjamin Newman, Maureen O'Brien, Eric Oppen, Catherine O'Shea, Kris Overstreet, Frank Parker, Nick Pollotta, Joel Polowin, Joe Raftery (filceolaire), Andrew Ross, Paul Rubin, Mike Richards , Steve Savitsky, Adam Selzer, ShadowWalker, Jacob Sommer, Rachel Silverman ("The Carrot-Topped"), Mark Sinden, Bill Sutton, Arthur Tansky (Arthur T), Gargravarr Thorbardinkle, Traveler Farlander, Jeff Urs, Kevin van Houten, Kevin Wald, Dave Weingart, Steven Wheeler, Mike Whitaker, Kip Williams, and Rob Wynne.
   
   The FILKfiles are designated Ffilexx.zip (or .txt, the xx being the number of the file) and can be downloaded or file requested on FIDOnet from StormGate Aerie (1:102/524), or downloaded from the internet , using the username of "filkfile" and the password of "filkphile" (My thanks to Rich Brown for setting this up. Free Mars!). I am also willing to email these to people - thus far most have been under 50k in size, though given the increase in download speeds over the years I'm probably going to make them bigger in the future.
   
   
3. Please, no flame wars. At least unless you're willing to conduct them solely in filksongs, and are reasonablly witty about it. Note - an offtopic argument may well involve people crossposting to many newsgroups, not all of which they read (this is USUALLY the case with spam). Use email to respond to them. Unless of course you've written a really good zinger in song in which case you may as well share it with the rest of us. :)
   
   
4. Please avoid crossposting to any ng but alt.music.filk. Instead, should your post involve other newsgroups, make a separate post to the group or groups (any that discussion can expect to remain germane to), and mention that you have done this in rec.music.filk, so the rest of us can come over and join the conversation without creating a nuisance in rmf.
   
   
5. Try to stay within shouting distance of the topic and be reasonably polite about it. Threads that show signs of getting out of hand may recieve a "KABONG!" message (usually, but not necessarily from me). This is purely a verbal warning that the discussion probably belongs elsewhere. The Overflow Mailing List has been set up specifically for discussions that go off the subject of filk but are still interesting to the parties involved; see here for subscription info.
   
   
6. And remember, invent a new and improved method of annoying all and sundry that isn't covered by the rules, and it probably will be soon enough. If, of course, you don't simply find yourself immortalized in song...