FINAID-L has been established as a mechanism for information exchange and problem resolution for use by USA college and university financial aid administrators and related personnel. It is intended to provide national forum for the discussion of all matters relating to the ADMINISTRATION of student financial aid at USA institutions of higher education.

Typical topics of discussion on this list might include automation within the financial aid community, the use of professional judgement, interpretation and impact of federal regulations, and institutional policies and procedures. The posting of aid-related position vacancies is permitted. Most topics associated with the administration of financial aid are fair game for discussion.

As with any topic-specific list, certain discussion items are NOT welcomed to this list. These topics include non-financial aid discussions, private business matters (regardless of their relation to financial aid), and non-ADMINISTRATIVE matters such as parental/student questions regarding the awarding of/applying for financial aid. If you are a parent or student, you will be better served by contacting your school's financial aid office. Similarly there are some FA-related lists that are more "focused e.g., the SFATech list

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/sfatech/listserv.html

Finally, kindly do _not_ post a message that is simply advertising your employment situation. Instead update your _signature_ file with some reference e.g.,

JOB wanted resume is at my homepage www.xxx.zzz/"abcdefg.

All messages sent to the FINAID-L list are automatically archived. As a subscriber to the list, you are permitted to request certain information about the list and it's contents from the LISTSERV software. This is accomplished by sending certain "commands" to the LISTSERV in the very same way that you requested your subscription.

Please Note
All COMMANDS must be sent to the LISTSERV and not the list itself. COMMUNICATIONS to your colleagues are sent to the list. The distinction lies between communicating with LISTSERV software with commands versus communicating with people with messages.

LIST (Mail) FINAID-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU
LISTSERV (Commands) LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU

All COMMANDS must reside in the text/body of your mail, but will not work if placed on the SUBJECT line.

Most subscribers will only send mail messages via the list (FINAID-L). However, for those so inclined, you may obtain additional information on LISTSERV COMMANDS through the "General Introduction Guide" which you may request by sending an "INFO GENINTRO" command to the LISTSERV as described above.

When communicating with your fellow financial aid colleagues, please make a special endeavor to use a significant description as your 'Subject' so that others may more easily evaluate their interest in your correspondence.

When using your system's REPLY function, your reply will most likely go back to the original poster. If you want to REPLY to ALL FINAID-Lers (approximately 4000), you will most likely need to overtype the TO field to be FINAID-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU Survey responses should always be sent back to the requestor and NOT the FINAID-L list. When REPLYing back to the list, won't you take a few moments and edit out of your reply all (or most) of the originator's question, including their headers, signature, or comments (unless required for unequivocal context)? Often, all you will need to do is copy (via the REPLY function) the original SUBJECT line with RE prepended.

A word about using profanity

Since most of the members of FINAID-L are administrators of Financial Aid either in colleges, universities, government or third-parties, it's safe to say that this mailing list can be considered a professional resource (as opposed to an informal "chat" board) with all the rights and responsibilities thereof. An important part of acting in a professional manner is the lack of profanity in our conversations. There are many, many ways to communicate your message without having to resort to vulgarity, no matter how upset you may be.

FINAID-L is a 24 hr/day, 7 days/week distribution. Thus, when your e-mail system is not available, it may result in error ("bounce") messages being returned to the list-owners. We may choose to either delete your subscription or suspend further distributions to you pending resolution of the problem (remember that each bounce to the list-owners represents some finite amount of work to which real time must be devoted).

FINAID-L is a relatively open list, and among its welcome and valuable members are officials of the Department of Education, state agencies and guaranty agencies. It is important, when posting a message about something that might be at or beyond the fringe of the law -- and for which an institution is seeking appropriate guidance -- to be careful not to declare that one's institution IS in violation.

Some Subscription Options and LISTSERV(R) Commands:

Instead of receiving individual FINAID-L distributions (since we have posted more than 5200 messages per year) you may elect to receive them as a daily digest. To do so, send the following e-mail text to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU (as appropriate) and do NOT REPLY TO _this_ message

SET FINAID-L DIGEST

If you find that you would prefer to switch back to individual e-mail distributions, then send the following text to the LISTSERV

SET FINAID-L NODIGEST

There is a method of receiving a Subject index without full text. Mail the LISTSERV the following text

SET FINAID-L INDEX

If you find that you would prefer to switch back to individual e-mail distributions, then send the following text to the LISTSERV

SET FINAID-L NOINDEX

If at anytime you would like to cancel your subscription to the FINAID-L list, you may do so by sending a

SIGNOFF FINAID-L

command to the LISTSERV. Alternatively you can suspend your distributions by send the following command to the LISTSERV

Previous FINAID-L discussions are available to all subscribers of our list. These discussions can be either be retrieved in weekly "chunks" (called notebooks) or "searched" using special e-mail statements sent to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU. The log files are organized relative to the first of every month. That is, LOG9704A is for Tuesday April 1st through Monday April 7th 1997. That means LOG9704C would be for the 15th through the 21st. LOG9704E would give you the remainder of the month.

GET FINAID-L log9704A
GET FINAID-L log9704C

The search facility is quite powerful, though the syntax of the those requests somewhat obtuse. As but one example, to search all FINAID-L postings that contained the Subject of SELECTIVE SERVICE for June 3rd to Jun 25th 1995, you would send this to the LISTSERV (and never to finaid-l)

// Search * in finaid-l from 95/06/03 to 95/06/25 where ,
// subject contains (selective and service)

Of course if posters did NOT use SELECTIVE and SERVICE anywhere in their Subject line, then of course this particular search strategy would not find them. That's one of several reasons why it's a good idea to use significant Subject (tag) lines.

Alternative methods of SEARCHING exist. Here is another technique posted to FINAID-L

Date Wed, 5 Feb 1997 171633 EST
From Bob Quinn <req1@psu.edu>
Organization Office of Student Aid
Subject Re Can somebody help...
To FINAID-L@LISTS.PSU.EDU

> There was a message out there a while ago regarding how to get a student's
> name and address to print on the first page of the ISIR for Windows 3.1
> for 97/98. I neglected to keep the response and now I deeply regret it!

FINAID-L,

Ginny's message reminded me of a new (improved) searching feature now available via a new release of the LISTSERV software.

Using just a SEARCH command (sent to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU - NOT FINAID-L) ~~~~~~~~

SEARCH FINAID-L ISIR Windows 3.1

returns identifying information about all messages meeting this criteria (containing all *3* strings)

-------- Listserv Output --------------
> search finaid-l isir windows 3.1
-> 3 matches.

Item # Date Time Recs Subject
------ ---- ---- ---- -------
005533 97/01/24 1030 25 97-98 EDExpress
005629 97/01/29 1610 22 Re Printing 97-98 ISIRs from Windows 3.1+
005773 97/02/05 1153 24 Can somebody help...

To order a copy of these postings, send the following command

GETPOST FINAID-L 5533 5629 5773

>>> Item #5533 (24 Jan 1997 1030) - 97-98 EDExpress

We too are having a problem importing ISIR's through Windows 3.1.
^^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^
When I print, I do not want to print to the printer or to the screen,

-------- End Listserv Output ----------

Note that LISTSERV tells you which postings matched your search criteria and shows you some of the matching lines of text from those messages. It also furnishes the exact command for you to use to retrieve the full text of those messages. Using this example, sending the following command to
LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU

GETPOST FINAID-L 5533 5629 5773

would request each of the three matching postings be sent to you. If you didn't want all three, you could remove the appropriate item #s from the GETPOST command.

Give it a try! The exact syntax of the SEARCH command for those of you who might be interested is

-----------------------
SEArch listname word1 <word2 <...>> Search list archives

or word1 <word2 <...>> IN listname
FROM date1 -> From this date
TODAY -> From today
TODAY-7 -> In the last 7 days
TO date2 -> To this date
WHERE
SUBJECT CONTAINS xxxx -> Only this subject
AND/OR
SENDER CONTAINS xxxx -> Only this author
Complex boolean
operations are
supported, see database
guide

---------------

There is an excellent LISTSERV(R)-related SEARCH tutorial at

http//www.knology.net/~jweinberger/search.htm

Remember the listname is FINAID-L and the hostname is LISTS.PSU.EDU

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Our LISTSERV host supports a WEB interface for many common operations e.g., subscribing, unsubscribing, archive retrieval and searching

The URL for that interface is

http//f05n16.cac.psu.edu/archives/finaid-l.html

Some of the operations require you to have a LISTSERV(R) password (not FINAID-L specific). To assign yourself one (or to begin to replace one that you may have forgotten), click

http//f05n16.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?GETPW1=

---------------

Please do NOT send test messages to FINAID-L, but if you are having problems with your subscription, do either of two things send the single line of text Q FINAID-L to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU or inquire of your list owner FINAID-L-REQUEST@LISTS.PSU.EDU

---------------

REPLY-TO discussion

A couple of thoughts on the "reply issue" since it has been coming up again lately

One subscriber wrote, in part

>I am a newcomer to the Financial Aid Office - less than 6 months. I started
>several months before the change to stop replies to the entire list.

I hope this thought is perhaps misstated. Replies to messages posted via FINAID-L are not prohibited. We've simply altered the default reply address. That means, in most cases, that your email system will direct your replies (by default) back to the original sender of the message rather than the entire FINAID-L list. We did this in order to reduce the number of non-relevant postings made list-wide by individuals who chose their reply function without really thinking about where that reply was going.

Under the "old way", nobody knew for sure whether or not a given reply was actually intended to be list-wide. Under the "new way", you can feel reasonably sure that the sender intended the message to be sent to 2800 subscribers (there are a few exceptions; ie. some mail systems will still reply to FINAID-L by default because of the Sender label).

In general, my observations of this change are positive. We don't appear to have the volume of off-topic posts to FINAID-L these days, so I would judge that our objective has been met. Unfortunately, the price we pay is (1) missing some postings that ideally should have been posted list-wide and (2) some of us being unable to differentiate FINAID-L and other mail in our inbaskets. And, of course, it can't be both ways.

I want to emphasize the concept of this being a reply DEFAULT. You retain the ultimate responsibility as to your reply destination. It's only in the absence of you upholding that responsibility that your reply potentially goes to an inappropriate destination.

As a listserv list subscriber, you must exercise these responsibilities each time you send or reply to the list. As with any other responsibilities you shoulder, you also have to use good judgement in doing so.

As a SENDER to a list, you should try to anticipate how other subscribers might reply. If you are conducting a survey, you should certainly INSTRUCT other subscribers to reply only to you and you should commit to providing summary results list-wide. The rest of us don't want to see 85 postings that read

1. yes
2. no
3. Twice

If you aren't doing a survey, but anticipate you might get a number of replies, you may want to follow the "reply to me" strategy. If you are posting a "what do you think about this?" type of message, then the burden of how to reply rests with the replier.

If you are a replier, you should be considering your intended audience. Has the original poster asked that you reply directly to him/her, and have they offered to summarize the results? Does the nature of your reply suggest that a large portion of the FINAID-L membership would benefit, or should it really be directed to just the original poster? Again, there's judgement associated with these decisions. All I would ask is that you think about it.

One final note Some of you have indicated that your mail system doesn't tell you who the original sender is, and therefore you are forced to reply list-wide. If that applies to you, you can send the following command to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU

SET FINAID-L DUALHDR

Please note the LISTSERV address and not FINAID-L. Dualhdr will place header information (Sender, Reply-To, etc) in the first few lines of the body of your mail message. You'll always know the origination of the message.

Thank you for your cooperation and support! Have a great weekend.

Bob Quinn
FINAID-L Owner
REQ1@PSU.EDU

---------------

SCAM and VIRUS discussion

FINAID-L has recently been the vehicle of many off-topic postings related to viruses, e-mail scams, etc. I'm asking that you NOT post those types of messages here, unless it is an issue that relates directly to Financial Aid AND YOU ARE ABLE TO SUBSTANTIATE THAT CLAIM. An example of an acceptable FINAID-L posting might be one that notifies the list membership of a virus known to have infected a piece of Financial Aid software used by some or all of us.

I can appreciate your desire to inform your colleagues of these types of dangers. However

(1) Most of these virus alerts turn out to be bogus

(2) The e-mail scams, both old and new, seem to live on forever. They are perpetuated through large forums like FINAID-L. FINAID-L cannot really support an announcement for every new virus or scam that comes along, given its current level of activity.

(3) There are specific forums (Web Sites, others lists, etc) that are devoted to the discussion of viruses and scams. If you have a particular interest or responsibility related to this area, you can monitor these
forums.

Thanks for your cooperation. Have a great weekend.

Bob Quinn
FINAID-L Owner
req1@psu.edu

---------------

Everything and everybody has its limits.

In the case of FINAID-L, the limits on the size of any single post is 200 lines, which does include headers and signatures.

This limit was chosen based upon an analysis of our archives both size of postings and contents thereof. Other than in rare circumstances, the postings that nearly always exceeded that size where frequently due to either a misconfigured mail system or mistakes made by the poster.

Furthermore, we request that you limit yourself toTEXT postings, and not word-processor or other encodings. Not all subscribers have access to the decoding programs, nor does the LISTSERV(R) always transmit encoded documents in a way that you might think.

If you have a large posting or other encoded document, feel free to either summarize or offer some other service where subscribers may request a copy.

The number of daily postings to FINAID-L are throttled. Currently the system default limit is 50. More than 50 requires list-owner intervention.

The nightly FINAID-L Digest also has limits. If the size of the Digest exceeds 1750 lines, it is broadcast at the time that that limit is exceeded, resulting in more than one daily Digest.

---------------

We have turned off *all* attachments. Common attachments are .VCF signature encodings; word-processing documents; MS-DOS/Windows executable programs (.EXE); graphic/images.

Attachments are problematic for a diverse email group they can be used to distribute viruses; they might not be processable by the receiver, they greatly increase the size of a message (and our archives); they become obsolete.

If the reason for wanting to distribute the attachment is sufficient, then you should arrange with your service provider/data center/LAN support specialist, to store it on your server and provide the subscribers with it's URL.

Of course we *continue* to size-limit postings (which includes RECEIVED line headers) to be 200 lines. Not only does this tend to inhibit the potential for the spread of viruses, it also cuts down on the poster's lack of editing of original messages, when REPLYing. The 200-line limit could also impact those folks whose email systems are configured to send us mail in both "plain" *and* "styled" (aka HTML) text (since their mail system sends the same message twice, more than doubling the effective size of the transmitted message).

For the most part, we are aware that this has caused some posters to have to stop posting their non-text signature files. This is as intended.

---------------

This list is hosted by the computer facilities at The Pennsylvania State University's Center for Academic Computing. ALL QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS REGARDING THE USE OF FINAID-L SHOULD BE REFERRED TO THE LIST OWNER or CO-OWNER

Robert E. Quinn (REQ1@PSU.EDU)
Director of Computer Services
The Pennsylvania State University
Office of Student Aid
314 Shields Bldg
University Park, PA 16802

Peter M. Weiss (Pete-Weiss@PSU.EDU)
Sr. Systems Engineer
The Pennsylvania State University
Office of Administrative Systems
0025 Shields Bldg
University Park, PA 16802-1202

Remember, the subscribers of the list only benefit when you direct your replies to the list, as opposed to replying privately to individual subscribers.

The information in this document is from FINAID-l