Welcome to the Supra Owners Group, International (SOGI)

This introduction was last updated on 30 November 2003. Please Read it carefully.

Welcome to the Supra Owners Group, International (SOGI). SOGI as a group utilizes two fundamental components: the mailing list and the web site.

This document describes the ground rules for the mailing list.

The SOGI mailing list is an informal, normally unmoderated forum for the discussion of Toyota Supras and Celica Supras. You will find many people in this international community with vast knowledge, differing interests, and good experiences who all share a common interest in the same car.

Any Supra-related topic is open for discussion. However you should check the FAQ, Tech Tips, and other sources on the website to see if your question has already been answered. General maintenance questions, while allowed, might get more responses on rec.autos, and questions about turbo modifications might find answers on Toyota Modifications.

Questions with easy answers may generate a lot of responses. The hard, interesting question may generate few (if any) responses. Don't be discouraged. Sometimes, nobody really does know the answer to your question. Once you find the answer, you'll be the expert to whom others will turn for help.

Please read the FAQ at http://www.supras.com/sogi/faq/ before posting any questions to the list. You may also want to review the archive of previous posts hosted at http://www.supras.com/pipermail/supras_supras.com/.

There are some rules imposed on the discussion. Failure to abide by these rules will result in possibly harsh action. This is a growing community and needs to be treated as such. We want to be able to show posts on this list to anybody without being embarassed by the content. Please keep in mind the general morals and ethics of life while posting your message - you will enjoy the list more, and so will the rest of the members!


1) All Non-Member posts will be moderated. Non-Member posts that in any way violate this charter (including questions that are already answered in the FAQ located at http://www.supras.com/sogi/faq/) will not be posted to the list and no notification will be sent back to the sender.

If you have a problem or an update to a question in the FAQ, please subscribe to the list and post your question or problem with the FAQ.

2) Replies to the list should be trimmed of as much old text as practical in order to reduce the bandwidth used and save the time of all readers. In the same vein, posts which are of no value to the list in general (such as "me too!" or "right on dude!") should be sent directly to the poster and not to the list. Please limit your own signature to just what's necessary and relevant to the list. DO NOT use ASCII Art in your SIG; it only lines up on machines configured identically to yours (which is NONE).

Please take special notice when replying if you are subscribed to supras-digest. DO NOT send the entire digest in your reply as such replies will not be posted to the list. Also, be sure to give your response an appropriate subject and only include the body text that pertains to your response. Subjects such as "Re: supras-digest V2 #598" are not appropriate.

3) Use clear subject lines. A frustrating part of being a member of an email list is being excited to read a message based on a great subject line, only to be disappointed when you find that the message has nothing to do with subject line. Please include as part of your the following descriptions:

Mk1 or MkI - For first generation 1979-1981 Toyota Celica Supras
Mk2 or MkII - For second generation 1982-1986 Toyota Celica Supras
Mk3 or MkIII - For third generation 1986.5-1992 Toyota Supras
Mk4 or MkIV - For fourth generation 1993.5-1998 Toyota Supras
GEN - For general SOGI or Supra information not specific to a particular model
FAQ - For additions, updates, and questions to FAQ related material

4) If you are even tempted to mark your postings as "Non-Supras" or "Off Topic" or "Waste of Bandwidth", please think hard about whether it is appropriate to post. It probably isn't. That said, we all will understand if you want to tell us your wife just had a baby. Please preface the subject line of any off-topic posts with, "OT:" or "Off-Topic".

"TEST" messages may NEVER be posted. Posting a "TEST" message will result in your immediate removal from the list. If you are receiving posts, then you can post as well, and have no need to "TEST".

Under no circustances should you post a message to the mailing list about computer viruses. Most such messages are themselves the virus: they affect the readers by wasting time. This applies to urban legends, chain mail, warnings about something congress is supposedly considering passing, and the like as well. If it's not on-topic for the supras list and someone forwarded it to you, it should not be sent it to the list.

Do not post jokes and humor to the list as the only content. That is what rec.humor.funny is for. And only send "Happy
(insert holiday here)!" greetings as part of another post.

5) Take the time to read all of the other current posts to see if your response has already been posted by another member; only then should you post a response. If a previous member notes that he/she is unsure about a particular part and you have experience with the particular subject, do feel free to elaborate on the subject -- preferably with additional or more clearly presented information.

Also, if you are unsure about your answer to a question, please be sure to clearly mark what you are unsure about. When you are sure about an answer, if possible include sources to expand upon your answer and maybe even provide some of the theory behind it, Remember that this list is only as helpful as the information provided is accurate.

6) Questions about other vehicles, even other Toyotas, including those with a great deal of similarity to the Supra such as Celicas and Cressidas, should not be be addressed to the supras mailing list (the only exception would be questions about the 5M and 7M engines which are used in both Cressidas and Supras).

7) This is a family oriented list - as such, please try to refrain from excessive swearing.

8) NO FLAMES! Most seriously, insults directed at other members or former members are strictly prohibited. Only the list administrator may be criticized or insulted with no penalty, but it should be done via private email. If you truly feel the need to respond aggressively to a particular posting, please send mail directly to the original poster and do not copy the list with your reply.

It is important to remember that sarcasm does not work well over e-mail, and may often be interpreted as a straight insult. Smileys :-) can help improve understanding of such constructions, but it is often best to avoid them completely.

9) Please take the time to ensure that you use proper spelling and punctuation in your posts. We're not school teachers or your mother, but we hope you take enough pride in your posts to try to make them as readable as possible... In the Cyberspace world of Email, your writing abilities as well as what you say are what leave an impression.

This applies to your screen names, as well. A screen name of "RacerVR4" or "racervr4" is acceptable in your return address, but please sign your posts with at least your real first name. We are a list of owners, not screen names.

10) Posts with mime or other attachments disrupt the digest readers. This is a text only list. Do not use HTML, fonts, stationary, or other types of formatting in your messages. This list is 100% pure ASCII text only. If you are using a mailer such as MS outlook, you should turn MIME off in your preferences.

Additionally, all attachments will be stripped automatically. You should not to post pictures or other attachements as they will
only result in blank messages sent to the list.

11) Anonymous postings will not be allowed to the supras list. Due to liability concerns we must be able to provide names when asked by law enforcement. Therefore, users of services such as hotmail which do not verify their users will not be able to subscribe to the mailing lists. There are other free email accounts on the net which do verify their users, yahoo.com and juno.com are examples, which are acceptable.

12) AUTO-RESPONDERS. NEVER use one of these while you are subscribed to the list. It will send an automated reply back to the list for every single message the list sends.

13) Commercial advertising is generally not allowed. Certain suppliers provide discounts to members, and they may be listed on a suppliers page. Announcements of such discounts may be posted no more often than about once a month. List members advertising personal supra-related items for sale should only be posted no more often than about once a week. Posting of non-supra related items by anyone is prohibited.


Although this list is usually unmoderated, members violating any of these rules may find themselves temporarily or permanently having their postings moderated. Severe violators may find themselves removed from the list completely. Such moderation or removal is at the discretion of the list administrator.

Occasionally, the list administrator will ask that particular subjects or threads on the list be allowed to die. This will happen when a thread is deemed to be so much in violation of the charter that it is unsalvagable. These requests are not an infringment upon your "Freedom of Speech" as this is a private forum. If you have any question as to why such action was requested, please email the list administrator directly and/or move the discussion to the supras-org list.

end

This mailing list is an automated system, using Majordomo. Send a single line mail message with the word 'help' in the body to inquire about all of the available Majordomo commands.

Messages which contain administrative words in the subject or body, such as subscribe, unsubscribe, and help, among others, will be held for moderation.

Messages from users whose From field does not match their subscribed address will be held for approval. Please try and post messages only from the account where you are subscribed to the list. Messages held for approval can be delayed significantly (sometimes for a week or more).

To benefit most from SOGI, you must join the mailing list. If you need one question answered, and do not wish to join the mailing list, you may still send a message to the group, but be patient when awaiting a response.

You can subscribe to the realtime distribution mode, where each posted message gets sent to you directly and individually, or you can choose the digest mode, where a group of messages get combined into a single message.


It is important to note that egroups.com redistributes the list and that people who receive the list via egroups are considered Non-Members when posting and that any subscription issues that arise must be resolved with egroups.com and not supras.com.

Members who are bouncing excessive amounts of email will be unsubscribed from the mailing list and added to a bounces mailing list which will send out notification once a day. If you receve mail from the bounces list, your problem has been corrected and you can resubscribe to the mailing list. You will also need to unsubscribe yourself from the bounces list.

By far the most common reason that users are bounced from the list is exceeding their mailbox quota. This is a very high traffic mailing list, commonly generating over 100 and sometimes over 300 messages a day (or 5-25 digests). You must read your email often if your system uses an email quota system to avoid bouncing mail.

The list administrator is Rich (rdp@ix.netcom.com).

Previous list administrators are:

  • Jim Jobe (March 2001 through February 2002)

  • Jeff Randall (April 1998 through March 2001 and February 2002 through December 2003)

  • Frank Wanicka (June 1997 through April 1998)

  • Daniel I. Applebaum (April 1992 through June 1997)

  • Don Eilenberger (March 1992 through April 1992)

Mike Kronvold has generously made WWW and FTP space available at Damocles Ventures. Damocles also hosts the mailing list.

The home page for SOGI is http://www.supras.com/

If you are a company/store/shop and would like to attract the attention of hundreds of performance enthusiasts who accept nothing less than the best, we will consider listing you on our links page if you have a quality service. A discount helps get you on the top of the list. ;-)

Archives of Supras discussion are located at egroups.com, Reference.COM, and findmail.com for various time periods. Archives dating back to April 1998 are also available in digest form.

Sincerely, Rich (rdp@ix.netcom.com)


Related mailing lists:

Toyota Modifications:
toyota-mods-request@cyberspace.cyberauto.com To join.
toyota-mods@cyberspace.cyberauto.com To send mail to the group.

MkIV Supras:
mailto:mirage1@mirage1.com with a subject of "SUBSCRIBE" To join.
(see www.MkIV.com for further details)