Bahai-Announce is a service provided by the

Bahá'í Computer and Communication Association (BCCA)

To subscribe you must be a member of the international Bahá'í community. When you subscribe for the first time, please include the following information:

• Your e-mail address

• Your name (last name, first name)

• Bahá'í identification number and the country of issue. If your National Assembly does not issue identification numbers, please submit the name of the secretary of your Local Spiritual Assembly or that of the administrative body that is responsible for your area and indicate how this person may be contacted. An acceptable alternative would be if you know a Bahá'í who is known to us and who can vouch for your status, then please submit (with his or her permission and indicate the means by which we may contact him/her.

• City, state/province, and country of residence.

• Geographic area you want to subscribe to, i.e., state or province (for Canada and U.S.) regional, national, international.

Please send your subscription request to Bahai-Announce-Request@bcca.org

This message is sent quarterly to every subscriber to the Bahai-Announce forum.

The purpose of Bahai-Announce is the dissemination of news and announcements to Bahá'ís throughout the world directly related to the Bahá'í Faith, including Bahá'í-inspired non-profit organizations.. The list is moderated in order to ensure that messages are kept to a length and frequency acceptable to those constrained by storage or financial limitations. The Bahai-Announce list is provided as a service by the Bahá'í Computer and Communication Association (BCCA). The BCCA is an international, grass-roots, all volunteer organization under the sponsorship of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States.

Messages must be no more than 2 screens (50 lines) long. Less than 1 screen (25 lines) is preferable. Abridge long messages (perhaps by referring the friends to your website for full details) or post them to another list sponsored by the BCCA. See note below for instructions on subscribing to other BCCA lists.

•Attachments

Messages with attached files will not be accepted.

Please use plain text rather than html or styled text when sending messages and please do not type in upper case or use diacriticals (i.e., accents) in the words because doing so causes them to translate into unwanted characters. If a post is prepared on a word processor, be sure to save the document in us-ascii text rather than the word processor format. All e-mail programs have options to send plain text.

•Identification

Please identify yourself and indicate your locality, i.e., city, region, country when sending a message to Bahai-Announce as well as signing your name to the post.

•Distribution

Messages pertaining only to a locality (such as local events, fund raisers) will be distributed only to that area or region. You may include a note to the moderators which localities you feel should receive your message, such as "Please post to subscribers in Connecticut," or "This is of interest to Bahá'ís in Central America." Such notes to the moderators should appear at the beginning of a message.

Please do not forward messages you receive from others to Bahai-Announce. If you think someone's message ought to appear on Baha'i Announce, ask the author to send it to Bahai-Announce@bcca.org directly.

Replies to messages posted to Bahai-Announce will be rejected. Respond directly to the author or original requester.

Requests for personal contacts or for documents should be sent to bcca-info@bcca.org Examples of this are queries along the lines of: "Looking for Bahá'ís in ..." or "Does anyone know how to contact ..." or "Does anyone know how to get a copy of ..."

Messages of a technical nature or about Internet resources will be rejected. Post them to Bahai-Tech@bcca.org (You must be subscribed to Bahai-Tech to post to that list.)

Post questions about the Writings to Bahai-Discuss@bcca.org or Bahai-Faith@bcca.org Please note that the Bahai-Faith mailing list is an echo of the internet newsgroup soc.religion.bahai (SRB) and as such is publicly accessible to both Bahá'ís and non- Bahá'ís. Whereas Bahai-Faith@bcca.org is open to all, you must be subscribed to Bahai-Discuss to post to that list.

Cross-posting to multiple lists is strongly discouraged. Please select the list most appropriate for the announcement.

Copyrighted materials

Posting of copyrighted materials should adhere to the guidelines of the US Copyright Office, as follows:
"Users should assume that materials found online through the Internet or other online service are copyrighted unless they are clearly Works of the United States Government or otherwise noted to be in the public domain. Generally, users may print or download one copy of copyrighted material for their personal use, unless different terms are specifically provided at the site, or provided in the ONLINE SERVICE LICENSE AGREEMENT. Any subsequent reproduction of downloaded or printed materials, whether in electronic or any other form, is governed by this policy issuance."

This includes copyrighted materials by Baha'is and Baha'i institutions.

Posting a website regarding an article would be preferable, specifying how such article is Baha'i-related.

Information from Institution websites

Letters and messages from National Assemblies or their offices that are posted on their website (e.g., www.usbnc.org, www.bahai.org.uk) should not be reproduced and posted without permission. However, it is permissible to post a message directing the friends to the website, e.g.: "The National Assembly has received guidance from the Universal House of Justice regarding clusters. You can see the message at www.usbnc.org." (Note that some websites may be accessible only to the friends within that country).

•Requests for funds

Requests for funds are accepted from institutions only. Deputization requests should include contact information for the sponsoring institution.

Brief stories about teaching successes are acceptable.

Requests for prayers are acceptable; but please be brief, especially in eulogies.

Advertisements are acceptable only if they meet all the restrictions above and also: they must offer a Bahá'í-related product or service. The word "ADVERTISEMENT" should appear at the beginning of the announcement itself and not in the subject line. A business or organization may post no more than one advertisement per quarter, i.e., every three months.

Please do NOT post any virus alerts to the list. If you receive a notice of a virus, forward it to Bahai-Request@bcca.org and the list managers will verify its authenticity before posting it to the lists.

Please be careful not to post addresses of minors, e-mail or otherwise.

To join a Bahá'í-only discussion group, send a request to <groupname>-request@bcca.org. The <groupname> is the name of the group to which you want to subscribe. For example, to subscribe to Bahai-Discuss, send an e-mail to Bahai-Discuss-Request@bcca.org with the following information:

• Your e-mail address

• Your name (last name, first name)

• Bahá'í identification number and the country of issue. If your National Assembly does not issue identification numbers, please submit the name of the secretary of your Local Spiritual Assembly or that of the administrative body that is responsible for your area and indicate how this person may be contacted. An acceptable alternative would be if you know a Bahá'í who is known to us and who can vouch for your status, then please submit (with his or her permission)and indicate the means by which we may contact him/her.

• City, state/province, and country of residence

If you wish to join more than one group, send your request to Bahai-Request@bcca.org indicating the groups you wish to subscribe to. The following is a list of some other BCCA lists. For a complete list send an e-mail to get-faq1@bcca.org in the subject line.

Bahai-Discuss: An unmoderated group for general discussion and consultation.

Bahai-Tech: A discussion group to discuss global computer networking.

Bahai-Women: Restricted to women only.

Bahai-Teachers: To discuss techniques and opportunities for teaching the Faith.

Bahai-Sisters: Forum for Bahá'í women of African descent from around the world.

Bahai-Singles: Forum for single Bahá'ís to get to know one another.

Bahai-Youth: Forum for Bahá'í youth worldwide. (There are also many regional youth lists for different parts of the world. See FAQ1 for the complete list.)

Joyful Noise: Forum to discuss using music in teaching, worship, etc.

Bahai-us-xx (where xx is the two-letter US state abbreviation). US state announcement lists. For example, to subscribe to the list for Arizona, send an e-mail to <bahai-us-az-request@bcca.org>. There are also many metropolitan area announcement lists. See FAQ1 for the complete listing.

Messages pertaining only to a locality (such as local conferences, fund raisers) will be distributed only to those subscribers have expressed an interest in messages pertaining to that locality. You may include a note in your message informing the moderators which localities you feel should receive your message.

Bryn Deamer, California (United States)

Virginia Healy, California (United States)

Shirley Macias, Arizona (United States)

You may contact the moderators' team at bahai-announce-mods@bcca.org

Updated January 2003