Go to The Humor List Mailing Group and fill out the section on how to subscribe to the HumorLIst. You will get an email which you will have to confirm (instructions are in the email) to join.

• subscribe

When you first subscribe, your Humor mail is set to Digest. This means you receive your jokes once a day. An index is included at the beginning of your digest. If you wish, you may receive your jokes as individual postings. (See the question under 'Other list-related questions.) You will receive 5 or more jokes a day.

You will find all kinds of humor. We realize all kinds of humor does not appeal to all people. As our List founder said, "Humor is humor, but there is not accounting for people's taste." Our contributors have been asked to put comments within brackets as part of the joke title to denote any jokes which might be objectionable to some people.

Anyone who is subscribed to the list may contribute humor. Just send your contribution to humorlist@thehumorlist.com. However, all subscribers are moderated until you prove that you can abide by The Rules, so your first few jokes will not appear until they are approved.

We encourage our contributors to contribute at least once a month. However, you may contribute every day and many of our regulars do.

As of the original creation of this FAQ (June 2006), there are 32 contributors.

Continued violation of The Rules. The next few questions mention a couple of The Rules.

This is not allowed. Requests, responses, comments, discussion, criticisms, and questions are not considered appropriate postings. All chatter, including witty remarks about what someone else says, should be sent only by private e-mail.

This is not recomended. The intent of the list has always been to provide a quick bit of humor that can be relayed via world of mouth. URLs will not allow that.

Today we must also consider virus propagation, IP address capture and a host of other complexities when we invite our subscribers to click on a URL. Just because it is now coming from a known contributor doesn't provide an assurance that we know 'where it has been' and that it is virus free.

Company policies come into play when corporate servers can now capture any URL clicked. Again, we don't want to get anyone into trouble at the office.

Lastly, we do not want to provide free advertising to other sites and those who would pirate our subscribers. "Blind URLs" will sometimes do that.

This is highly discouraged and repeated violations will result in removal from the contributors list. Our contributors are required to get individual postings and read them so they can avoid this practice.

Contributors are paid the same as the List Maintainers. I believe if we put our salaries from this list together, we might be able to get a stick of gum. Our salary is the satisfaction is that we are making people laugh.

Bill Edwards is the Founder of the UGA Humor List, which is now called The Humor List. >Why did Bill Edwards start the UGA Humor List?

His motivation for founding the list was to provide a uncensored and diverse source of humor for a college seminar about the "Communication of Humor." He had planned to use a list called NUTS for his seminar. NUTS has to have been one of the most chaotic and ill-mannered lists ever to have been. In February 1993, one month before Bill was to lead his seminar, the postmaster wisely killed NUTS. Edwards petitioned the computer staff at the University of Georgia to allow him to create HUMOR.

The UGA Humor List had its first day of postings on April 9, 1993.

The first day, there were 9 postings to the list. However, one of these postings was about 50 jokes left over from the NUTS list, mostly lawyer jokes.

As of the creation of the faq (June 2006), there are about 8-10 a day.

Only monthly statistics have been kept on this. As of March 1997, we had 10,721 subscribers.

Only monthly statistics have been kept on this. As of March 1994, we had 294 contributors.

Only monthly statistics have been kept on this. As of October 1998, we had 120 countries.

While there is a email interface to the list, it does not have all the capabilities as the web page. The Humor List Mailing Group provides a fairly simple interface to change anything releated to your subscription to The Humor List.

The Humor List Mailing Group web page has several sections.

1. A section to join HumorList
2. A section to Login to HumorList
3. A section to Unsubscribe from HumorList
4. A section to have your password mailed to you

To change any of your subscriber options, go to the Login section and enter the Email address you subscribed to HumorList with and your password, which was on the email you got when you subscribed to HumorList. You will then be taken to another page which lets you change other things about your subscription.

Here is what can be done through the Subscriber options page of The Humor List Mailing Group

1. Unsubscribe
2. Turn On or Off your Password Reminder. It is not a good idea to turn it off if you think that you might ever post to the HumorList or change any of your subscriber options.
3. Change your email address.
4. Change your name.
5. Turn Mail Delivery On or Off. (Do this if you don't want to receive mail for a while.)
6. Turn Digest On or Off. (Turn Digest Off if you want to receive individual postings.)

You may also make changes by Email by sending an email to with one of the following in the Subject or Body of the email (words in () are not needed, they just explain what you can do):

1. unsubscribe (from HumorList)
2. set show (Show your current option settings)
3. help (Returns help on email commands)
4. set help (Returns help on the Set options)
5. password (returns your current password)
6. There are several other things which may be done, but they require that you include your password in the email. Use these options with caution.
   1. password oldpassword newpassword (Changes password)
7. The following must be preceded by the following command:
   1. set authenticate password (password is the password you got when you subscribed)
8. set digest plain (Get Digests in plain text format)
9. set digest mime (Get Digests in MIME format)
10. set digest off (Get individual postings
11. set delivery off (Stops postings or Digests)
12. set delivery on (Starts postings or Digests again)
13. set reminders off (Turns off monthly password reminder)
14. set reminders on (Turns on monthly password reminder)

Go to The Humor List Mailing Group and login. You can then Turn Digest Off.

• set digest off

Go to The Humor List Mailing Group and login. You can then Turn Digest On.

• set digest plain
• or
• set digest mime

Go to The Humor List Mailing Group and login. You can then Turn Mail Delivery Off.

• set delivery off

When you return, go back and login again and turn Mail Delivery On.

• set delivery on

If you have not turned your password reminder OFF, you will get a monthly reminder of your password. If you can't wait until the next reminder or have turned it off, go to The Humor List Mailing Group and enter the email address you subscribed to HumorList with and you will be sent a reminder.

• password

We would encourage you to be a contributor. (See above on how to be a contributor). You might want to submit other jokes sometime. You don't have to submit more than once a month if you don't want to. I only submitted about that often when I started.

If this is really not an option for you, any of our staff would be glad to submit your joke for you. Click on their names below (Doug Harter or Sandy) to create an email to them.

Currently, our contributors are only from about 3 countries. Anyone from anywhere can be a contributor. Back in Sept 1996 we had contributors from 22 countries.

There are many ways you can help:
• Add The Humor List to a webring
• Add The Humor List to search engines
• Advertise The Humor List in humor or computer magazines.
• Add a signature to your email telling people how to subscribe to The Humor List

You are expected to manage your address by going to The Humor List Mailing Group and changing your email address.

• password oldpassword newpassword

Go to The Humor List Mailing Group. You can unsubscribe from there.

• unsubscribe

Doug Harter is the maintainer of the faq. Send him an email at traffic@thehumorlist.com with your question(s). He will research the answer and add it to the faq.