The Merry Rose is what is normally called a mailing list or mail exploder. People send messages to one central address, which then turns around and resends that message out to a list of people that has subscribed to the list. The Merry Rose exists to discuss topics of interest to the Kingdom of Atlantia in the Society for Creative Anachronism. The SCA is a non-profit, educational organization of people that study the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and recreate those parts we find interesting.
People in the SCA use a medieval name instead of their real name in order to get more into the mindset of the past. This also extends to other things that have to do with the SCA. The Merry Rose is supposedly a tavern where people gather to gossip and exchange ideas.
To post messages to the Merry Rose they must be sent to atlantia@atlantia.sca.org. This will resend them to everyone on the list, including yourself, unless you have instructed the software not to send you posts sent by yourself. It used to be that anyone could send posts to the list, but unfortunately mailing lists are a prime target for spammers so sometime in 1999-2000 the list went to a subscribers only posting policy. Exceptions to this rule, if there is a good reason are available, please contact the list keeper, kendrick@wayfarer.org for more information. When you receive a post from the list and you try to reply to it, you must make sure that the address it is going to is atlantia@atlantia.sca.org. Some mailers try to send it back to owner-atlantia@atlantia.sca.org. This address doesn't go to the list, it only goes to the list administrators. Another reason may be that if you try to send a message to a large group of people our mail system may reject the message because the mail header is too long. If this is the case, try resending your message just to the Merry Rose by itself. Finally, a third reason some posts don't make it to the list is that our system trys to be smart and intercept messages that it thinks are asking for help. It then sends them to the list administrator instead of the list. This problem is being worked on.
All subscription/configuration requests are handled by a web page. Please see http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/listinfo.cgi/atlantia-atlantia.sca.org for more information. If you do not have web access, you can send a message to atlantia-request@atlantia.sca.org for instructions on how to subscribe/unsubscribe via e-mail.
The first place the list was hosted allowed people to add comments besides their e-mail address to the main list, but our current place uses a newer version of the software that is set to strip those comments out, and only keep the e-mail address. This is done because many times those comments were not formatted correctly and just ended up being problems for the list administrators.
The mailing list software that we are using has been configured to add those lines to the end of every message sent out in order to remind people about various places for list information. When you quote someone's message in a reply, you should take care to delete those lines so they won't end up in the message twice (or more times).
Yes, after operating for almost two years, the Merry Rose finally got a digest version. If you would rather get one large message once in a while, rather than a bunch of small ones, you might consider subscribing to the digest instead of the main list. The digest saves all the messages posted to the main list and periodically sends them out in one big mail message.
To change your subscription to digest mode, please see the web page http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/listinfo.cgi/atlantia-atlantia.sca.org for more information. If you do not have web access, you can send a message to atlantia-request@atlantia.sca.org for instructions on how to set digest mode via e-mail.
Posting is the same regardless of whether you're subscribed to the digest or the main list. See section How do I post to the Merry Rose? for more information.
Yes, see the web page http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/listinfo.cgi/atlantia-atlantia.sca.org for more information. If you do not have web access, you can send a message to atlantia-request@atlantia.sca.org for instructions on how to set no-mail mode via e-mail. Remember to turn mail back on when you come back. :-)
Yes! You can find more information about the Merry Rose at http://merryrose.atlantia.sca.org/. There you can find links to the frequently asked questions and the archives, along with links to the Kingdom of Atlantia and SCA web pages.
Posts from the Merry Rose (except those before January 1995) are archived and can be found at several locations. Posts between January 1995 and June 1999 can be found at http://merryrose.atlantia.sca.org/archive/. Posts after January 2001 can be found at http://seahorse.atlantia.sca.org/pipermail/atlantia-atlantia.sca.org/. Posts between July 1999 and January 2001 are currently not available publicly but the hope is that they will be soon. If you need to find a post within this time period, please e-mail the listkeeper kendrick@wayfarer.org.
There is an unofficial badge that was presented to Lord Kendrick Wayfarer at the Storvik Baronial Investiture in March of 1995. The blazon is
(fieldless) On the seeds of a rose barbed and seeded proper, in fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an increscent, all sable.which is heraldese for a rose with a smiley on it. :-) There have been rumors of badges to be made, but as of yet none have surfaced. You can see what it looks like at the Merry Rose website.
The topic of a principality in the northern reaches of Atlantia is one that seems to crop up every now and then. This list was created in the midst of some of these talks and therefore received a lion's share of posts on it near the beginning. That has since tapered off, but you may still hear people talk about it now and then. Apparently this issue is able to galvanize people on both sides into almost despising the people on the other, while those who don't feel strongly either way get caught in the middle.
No, absolutely not! The Merry Rose is a list about SCA stuff, specifically concerning SCA stuff in the Kingdom of Atlantia. It is the most inappropriate place to which you could possibly send your information. Also, not everyone uses the same kind of computer you do, so your "important information" about the latest MS-Windows virus may not even affect a lot of the people you end up sending your message to. I'm not saying you shouldn't tell your friends, just that the Merry Rose is the wrong way to go about it.
Here are some places you can look to find out about virus hoaxes and urban legends. (Note that it is very likely that these URLS do not exist anymore. If you find one that is broken, please e-mail the FAQ maintainer at kendrick@wayfarer.org.)
No. Although most modern mailers can automatically handle binary attachements to e-mail messages, not all of them can. In addition, the Merry Rose digest is constructed by concatenating a bunch of e-mail messages together and sending them all out as one message. If you attach a picture to your message to the list, all the people receiving the digest will get is a bunch of junk. If you have pictures that you took at an event that you want everyone to see, please put them up on a web page and send a message to the list informing everyone of their location, but please don't send them to the list.
Yes, you can find this FAQ in text, postscript, PDF, and SGML format at the Merry Rose website.
No, problem. Just send any other questions you may have to kendrick@wayfarer.org so I can answer them for you and add them to this document so other people can find them too.