VIP-L stands for Vision Impaired People's List and it is a community service to the blind and vision impaired community in Australia and abroad. Please note that, despite the list name, vip-l is open to anyone with an interest in blindness, vision impairment, disability or accessibility!
Since 1994, the vip-l mailing list has been the leading email-based source of announcements and information exchange relating to blind and vision impaired people in Australasia. Tim Noonan started and administered the list throughout its life, but due to other commitments decided to discontinue it at the end of 2009. Mat Mirabella has created a new version of vip-l and it is hoped that the new list will continue this great community service.
The focus of vip-l is predominantly information sharing, as well as being a forum where list members can ask technical and other questions relating to blindness or vision impairment. While members will sometimes provide commentary on posts, the purpose of the list is not primarily for discussion and debate of topics.
The scope of vip-l is quite broad, but the volume of messages sent to the list should be relatively low. This list has a diverse readership, so information sent to it should be of interest to more than just a few readers.
As a general guide, the information sent to the list should be of greater interest to people who are blind or vision impaired, than it is likely to be for the general population.
The scope of vip-l has been returned to its original role - that is, informational posts, announcements and questions and answers of relevance to people who are blind or vision impaired in Australasia. Accordingly, vip-l is not a list for discussion and debate of issues.
The following examples of appropriate and inappropriate posts to the list only serve as general guidelines, not as absolute rulings. List members are expected to use common-sense and reasonable judgement in deciding what to send to the list, and when interpreting list guidelines such as these.
Appropriate messages sent to the list might include:
Announcements including:
Information including:
Member questions and findings including:
Personal Buy Swap and Sell:
Messages not Suitable for VIP-L might include:
Although announcements about new products and services are definitely welcomed, use of vip-l for direct marketing and sales is strongly discouraged.
The vip-l list is not meant to be a platform for debate or expressing personal views on this or that, there are many other lists on which you can do that. If you have a differing view than another list poster, please write to them off list to express your views. This way, the other members (of which there may be several hundred) don't have to be drawn into the debate, and they can continue focussing on the reading of informative and constructive posts.
We don't mind a couple of messages for the purpose of clarification, but one of the strengths of vip-l (when it is running efficiently) is that people can get a lot of useful new information without reading hundreds of messages a day. When people send ego-driven posts, it just results in further blow-out of the number of messages, and frustration for the hundreds of members of the list.
The moderators will do their best to keep the list regulation minimal, leaving it to everyone to respect the principles expressed in the list guidelines, but sometimes people get carried away and forget that they are moving beyond the list purpose.
Disagreeing with an idea is fine, as long as your disagreement is presented in a tactful and respectful way, and as long as, in disagreeing, you are contributing something meaningful that other list members can benefit from. For example, your review of a product's accessibility differs from someone else who has posted, so you might want to point out your view so that the information is available to everyone. If your disagreement is mainly with the person and is on an emotive level, take the issue to them privately, not on the list.
If you are in doubt as to the suitability of a message you are considering sending to vip-l, please email the list moderators.
To contact the moderators of the vip-l list, please send email to:
vip-l-moderators@freelists.org.
To join vip-l, send an email to vip-l-request@freelists.org With "subscribe" in the subject or body of the message (without the quotes).
To Leave vip-l, send an email to vip-l-request@freelists.org With "unsubscribe" in the subject or body of the message (without the quotes).
To get the list FAQ which contains list guidelines, send an email to vip-l-request@freelists.org With "faq" in the subject or body of the message (without the quotes).
To post to the list, send your email to:
vip-l@freelists.org.
All list members will automatically receive messages that are sent to the vip-l list by list members.
Unlike many mailing lists, replying to a vip-l mail message will not result in all list members seeing your reply! Therefore your reply will only go to the original sender by default.
If you would like your reply to also go to all the vip-l members, then either edit the To: field, or the CC: field to contain the list email address vip-l@freelists.org.
You should only send your reply to the entire list if you believe that your message will be of interest to a significant number of list members.
VIP-L is a free community service. While reasonable efforts are taken to ensure that messages are accurate and appropriate in scope, the moderators are unable to take any responsibility for the actual content of posts from members or for the actions of list members.