The announce@polyboston.org mailing list

What the list is

announce@polyboston.org is a mailing list for poly, poly-curious, and poly-friendly people in the general vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It is primarily for announcements of interest to that community (mostly announcements of events, like discussion and support groups and social gatherings).

A lot of the events that get announced on it are organized by members of Poly Boston. (Family Tree events are also often announced there.)

“Poly” is short for “polyamorous” or “polyamory”. Polyamory is having or being able to have consensual, honest, respectful relationships with more than one person at a time, or being able to romantically love more than one person at once, with the knowledge and consent of all people involved.

The Poly Boston lists and events are not a dating service or a cruising area. (Many of us have nothing against dating services or cruising areas; that’s just not what this space is for. If you’re looking for poly partners, you might want to consider http://www.polymatchmaker.com/.)

The announce@polyboston.org list is only for announcements, not discussion. See below for information about a companion chat list.

Guidelines for posting

The list is for announcements of specific interest to the Boston-area poly communities (e.g., Poly Boston, Family Tree, and Love Without Bounds). For instance, announcements of specifically poly-relevant events in the Boston area are clearly appropriate. Essentially, there are two tests: is it geographically specific to this area, and is it specific to the poly community (communities).

Commercial email is never appropriate on this list. (If it has a genuine, not artificial, connection to the Poly Boston community, then it might be appropriate on the chat list. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.)

That's the short version. For the long version, see The purpose of the [...] mailing list, based on something I posted to the list in April 2000. As with any mailing list, it's probably a good idea to watch the list traffic for a while after you subscribe to see what sort of things get posted before you post for the first time.

If you have stuff you want to share with (some) list members that doesn't meet the above tests, you might want to subscribe to the chat list, described below.

How to subscribe

You can subscribe on the web at

• http://polyboston.org/lists/listinfo/announce

You can also subscribe by sending mail with the single word

    subscribe

in the body of the message, from the account you want to subscribe, to the address announce-request@polyboston.org. In either case, you'll need to reply to an automated message with a confirmation code (to prevent random people subscribing you without your permission), and also to a short note from me before your subscription is confirmed (to make sure you understand what the list is for).

I’m sorry about the inconvenience of the multi-stage subscription process, but before I started asking people a few questions before approving subscriptions I occasionally got subscribers who had no idea what the list was about and got righteously indignant when they discovered what “polyamory” was, who would post personals ads (or other ads) to the list, or who weren’t in the Boston area and were never likely to be able to attend events in person.

If you have trouble, send mail to postmaster@polyboston.org (which will get to me) and I'll try to help

The chat list

There's another list, chat@polyboston.org, which is intended for less-narrowly-focussed discussion. (You can't subscribe to it unless you are already on the announcements list.)