The answers here are to the sort of questions you might wish to ask before you are a full member of the list.
A mailing list is a group of people who all have an interest in the same subject. Mailing list software (the MLM or Mailing List Manager) enables every list member to send an email that will be circulated automatically to every other list member.
There are large mailing lists with many thousand members. These can get over-busy and the standard of emails tends to fall. The lists I run are generally much smaller, so are rather nicer to use: there tend to be several very knowledgeable people on each list who can give expert advise.
However, in order to keep the mailing list messages 'tidy' there are rules about how you should post to the list.
Don't worry about these rules: if you break them the MLM software simply holds the message, tells you it has done so and sends a message to the list moderator (myself) to say there's a message needing attention. So you'll learn the rules slowly as you need to.
No you won't. One reason for the two emails (Subscribe' and 'Confirm' is so that spammers cannot join the mailing list. The mailing list and all it involves is members only. Spammers simply cannot get at it.
The list also has rules. One of the rules is 'No attachments'. So if anyone on the list has an infected computer, the attachments that it would send out will not get through to the list.
Yes you can.
If you are changing from normal to digest don't forget to unsubscribe from the normal list or you will get every message twice.
With a normal subscription to the list, each message from the list members is forwarded to you individually. However (particularly with busy lists) some people prefer to get a week's worth of messages in one drop. This is a digest.
Currently the MLM software prepares a digest once a week, but this value can be changed if listers wish it.
Since these lists are specialist ones they are not very busy and I would generally recommend against getting a digest.
Yes there are - but don't let this put you off. The list is set up so that is you don't post according to the rules your posting will be referred to the list owner (myself) who will contact you to explain.
These rules exist mainly so that the list archives will remain reasonably neat and tidy and will be useful to other list members. Being a genealogy mailing list, the archives will hold useful information.