WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR THE NEWSGROUP?

1. Be sure to get permission before posting copyright lyrics. Some people who are willing to have their lyrics posted to the newsgroup or to other newsgroups have given permission to be listed in the blanket permission list, which follows this message. This only covers posting to newsgroups/echoes/forums/whatever your service calls them - for any other use use the contact information to get their permission first.
   
   Please do not post anything but unencoded ascii text. Make gifs, wav files etc. available for ftp or download and post a pointer to where they may be found instead.
   
   
2. For awhile I kept an archive of songs posted to rec.music.filk as a series of files, included by the request of the poster*. Having tripped over my own feet once too often and fallen several years behind, I have given up on this, but the extant files may still be found as follows: The FILKfiles are designated Ffilexx.zip (or .txt, the xx being the number of the file) and can be downloaded, using the username of "filkfile" and the password of "filkphile" (My thanks to Rich Brown for setting this up. Free Mars!). I am also willing to email these to people - most of the earlier ones are about 50K in size, due to the very slow connect times of the era, though later ones are bigger.
   
   *To avoid including songs posters did not want archived. Note that there are other services that archive everything in the newsgroups regardless, so remember to include the x-no-archive header if you don't want this done.
   
   
3. Please, no flame wars. At least unless you're willing to conduct them solely in filksongs, and are reasonably witty about it. Note - an offtopic argument may well involve people crossposting to many newsgroups, not all of which they read (this is USUALLY the case with spam). Use email to respond to them. Unless of course you've written a really good zinger in song in which case you may as well share it with the rest of us. :)
   
   
4. Please avoid crossposting to any ng but alt.music.filk. Instead, should your post involve other newsgroups, make a separate post to the group or groups (any that discussion can expect to remain germane to), and mention that you have done this in rec.music.filk, so the rest of us can come over and join the conversation without creating a nuisance in rmf.
   
   
5. Try to stay within shouting distance of the topic and be reasonably polite about it. Threads that show signs of getting out of hand may recieve a "KABONG!" message (usually, but not necessarily from me). This is purely a verbal warning that the discussion probably belongs elsewhere. The Overflow Mailing List has been set up specifically for discussions that go off the subject of filk but are still interesting to the parties involved; see here for subscription info.
   
   
6. And remember, invent a new and improved method of annoying all and sundry that isn't covered by the rules, and it probably will be soon enough. If, of course, you don't simply find yourself immortalized in song...