4. How to distribute an announcement to the list Short announcements of interest to operator algebraists are sometimes distributed with updates to the list. In addition, I will put announcements and links to announcements on the associated WWW site. To handle the increasing number of such requests in a consistent way, I have developed the following guidelines. Please do _not_ make your own mass mailings to this list. I have the machinery for mass mailings already set up here, and, if your announcement is appropriate, I will distribute it. If it isn't appropriate, it shouldn't be distributed. CONTENTS 4.1. Introduction. 4.2. What subjects are appropriate for announcements? 4.3. Announcements emailed with directory updates. Special provisions for conferences. Special provisions for job ads. 4.4. Announcements on my WWW site. 4.5. Links to your announcement from my WWW site. 4.1. INTRODUCTION There are three ways to have announcements distributed: (1) By email with an update to the directory to all people listed in the directory. (2) By my putting the announcement on the WWW site associated to the directory. (3) By my putting a link to your WWW site on the announcement page of my WWW site. You can use any combination of these methods. For all of them, you must write your own material. For (1), you submit a short announcement subject to rigid formatting and length rules; description below. For (2), you submit a text file (or an html file), and a suitable pointer to it to insert in one of my WWW pages; the pointer can be created by filling in the blanks in a form below. For (3), you just submit the pointer. Announcement must be of particular interest to operator algebraists; details below. Please note that you should _not_ distribute your own mass mailings to my directory; I am trying to do what I can to stem the massive tide of junk email. 4.2. WHAT SUBJECTS ARE APPROPRIATE FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS? Announcements must be of general interest to a significant portion of the operator algebra community. Thus, announcements of the following are all appropriate: conferences on operator algebras, special sessions on operator algebras at general conferences, special programs with a substantial operator algebra component, publication of textbooks and reference works on operator algebras, publicly available databases, web sites, and discussion lists of substantial interest to operator algebraists, and jobs available (see special provisions for these below). Announcements of the following kinds of things are specifically excluded, mostly as being of too narrow an interest: items with no particular emphasis related to operator algebras, research results (however spectacular), publication of research results (even in book form), and requests for mathematical information, assistance, or collaboration. In addition, announcements and announced events may have no political content. Some excluded items would be appropriate for an operator algebras discussion list. As far as I know, no such list currently exists. I do not have time to operate one, but if anyone wants to start one I would be happy to advertise it. 4.3. ANNOUNCEMENTS EMAILED WITH DIRECTORY UPDATES Note: The length and format restrictions here are intended to keep the updates readable, and to make sure the announcements in them actually get read. They don't apply to WWW announcements. For a sample, see under conferences (below). D1. Announcements will be distributed with the next regularly scheduled update to the list. (Except under unusual circumstances, this should be no more than three months after the receipt of the announcement.) D2. Announcements should be as short as possible, normally no more than 10 lines of text. The announcement should merely outline the item, and if appropriate provide an address or web site from which more complete information can be obtained. D3. No announcement will be distributed more than once. (I have made one exception to this, for a full year special program at the Fields Institute. Also, 2 line titles of conferences remain until the conference has occurred.) The following formatting rules are needed to ensure that the distribution of announcements proceeds smoothly. F1. Announcements should be in plain text (7 bit [US] ASCII [see "http://www.uoregon.edu/~ncp/email.html" for more information]), and may not contain tab characters. Note that all Microsoft character sets contain at least some inadmissible binary characters. (It is permissible to use e' for an accented e, and similar devices. U Umlaut should be ue, etc. TeX codes can also be used.) These restrictions are to ensure that the announcement is legible on all machines. F2. The announcement should start with a one line title in all capital letters, then a blank line, then the text in mostly lowercase letters as usual. F3. Every nonblank line must begin with the character sequence "# " (number symbol, blank), and contain a total of at most 79 characters. (The initial sequence protects users of UNIX alias files and the character limit protects those whose machines truncate lines after 80 characters.) SPECIAL PROVISIONS FOR CONFERENCES C1. Long lists of organizers or invited speakers are strongly discouraged. Shorter conferences should have shorter announcements. Normally, for a conference scheduled to last n days, I will list at most min (n+1, 3) organizers and at most min (2n, 10) invited speakers. If there are more than three or four invited speakers, they should be listed by first initial and last name. C2. Please also provide a 2 line "reminder", with the second line indented at least half way, which will appear in every succeeding update until the time of the conference. It should include _only_: Conference title, location, date, and one email address. Do not include a WWW address. (The reminders will appear under a heading which includes the WWW address for links as described in Section 4.5.) Sample conference announcement: # SPECIAL SESSION ON OPERATOR ALGEBRAS AT APRIL AMS MEETING IN CORVALLIS # There will be a special session on operator algebras at the AMS # regional meeting in Corvallis OR (Oregon State U.) 19-20 April 1997. # Speakers will include Bill Arveson, Jeff Fox, Masamichi Takesaki, and # Nik Weaver; see WWW site for the full list. Organizers are Huaxin Lin # and N. C. Phillips. See the AMS Notices (eg. Feb. issue, page 295) for # general meeting info; email Phillips ([email address deleted]) for # specific special session info. Abstracts etc. will eventually be # available at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~hlin/Corvallis.html. Sample 2 line "reminder": # Special Session on Operator Algebras at April AMS Meeting in # Corvallis, 19-20 April 1997, email: [email address deleted] SPECIAL PROVISIONS FOR JOB ADS J1. Job ads will be attached at the end of the appropriate update, with single blank lines between them. They are limited to 3 lines (except under highly unusual circumstances and with prior approval from me). Each line must start with the character sequence "# " (#, blank), and is limited to 79 characters. They must be formatted by the advertiser, just like other announcements. J2. Job ads should use abbreviations as much as possible, such as "postdoc", "UC Berkeley", "UCLA", "U. Oregon", etc. They need not use complete sentences. They must include directions for getting further information ("see e-math"; an email address; etc.). Stock phrases ("Preference will be given to areas already represented in the department"; "An affirmative action institution"; etc.) are prohibited. J3. Job ads will run only once. J4. Multiple jobs should be combined in one ad. Normally, I will not run a new ad from an institution until the deadline announced in a previous ad has expired. J5. Advertised jobs need not be restricted to operator algebraists, but jobs restricted to other areas of mathematics should not be advertised here. J6. Please do _not_ distribute your own job ads. Sample job ad: # UC Santa Barbara has at least one two-year position for new or recent Ph.D. # Preferred areas include functional analysis. Details available from e-math # at the AMS. Research is the key, but a good teaching record is essential. 4.4. ANNOUNCEMENTS ON MY WWW SITE I will place announcements (without length and format restrictions) on the WWW site associated with the directory. You simply email me the file (plain text, HTML, TeX, or whatever), and specify a file name. The file _must_ be in 7 bit ASCII. I have received messages in a primarily text format in which every "=" (equals sign) has been replaced by "=3D" (equals, three, D), which among other things causes HTML not to work properly. I will put the file at the URL: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ncp/Directory/Announcements/XXX/, where "XXX" is one of "Conferences", "JobAds", or "MiscAnn" depending on the subject of your announcement, and "" is the file name you specify. The file name must include any required suffixes (such as ".html"). Warning: This does not by itself create any links to your announcement. See Section 4.5 for how to get one. 4.5. LINKS TO YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT FROM MY WWW SITE Announcements are listed in the WWW page at the URL: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ncp/Directory/Announcements/CurrAnn.html To have a link to your announcement put on this page, email me a piece of HTML code for insertion into the file. Your code should start with "
  • " (to indicate the beginning of an item in a list), and should contain a very brief description of the item, linked to the appropriate places. For a conference, you would include the subject, location, and date. You can have links to both an announcement as described in Section 4.4 and to some other site that you yourself maintain. Links to announcements as in Section 4.4 should be given in relative form: "XXX/" in the notation used there. Even if you do not want a regular announcement in a directory update, you might consider submitting a two line notice that a link has been added here. I will run them under a section for new WWW links in the next directory update. If the link is to your site, the information must be readable to users of all systems. I will not announce links to sites on which the main information is in Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, or any other proprietary format. Nor will iI link to pages which require the enabling of security hazards like JavaScript or privacy hazards like Flash. The commonly used acceptable formats include plain text (7 bit ASCII), html (without JavaScript, and written to be readable by any browser; see "http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/"), pdf, various forms of TeX, and jpg (for images). Here are examples, for an AMS special session on operator algebras. The first has one link, the second two. The local file name is "OrStUSS", which is a plain text file. Version with one link:
  • Special Session on Operator Algebras at the AMS regional meeting of 19-20 April 1997 in Corvallis, Oregon. (You could provide a link to your own site in place of the link to an announcement at my site.) Version with two links:
  • Special Session on Operator Algebras at the AMS regional meeting of 19--20 April 1997 in Corvallis, Oregon: directory announcement; Special Session home page.