The Lord Peter Wimsey Mailing List (LordPeter) was created in September 1998. Hosted by Yahoo!Groups, the list has just over 1,000 members and is growing daily. Below you'll find a lot of information, but if you're a new member (or an old one), it's essential that you review all of it. We don't make exceptions for anyone.

Note: In a probably futile attempt to evade the spambots, all email addresses that belong to real people contained within the FAQ have been encoded with javascript. If your browser doesn't support javascript, I suggest you upgrade.

There are a few different ways to go about subscribing to LordPeter.

The first way is to go to the Yahoo!Groups website and do it. You will have to have a Yahoo ID in order to subscribe this way--here's some information about how to go about getting a Yahoo ID and linking it to your existing email address (you do not have to use Yahoo Mail in order to to receive messages--that's one of the biggest misconceptions about the Yahoo ID requirement). After you've linked your email address to your ID, you can sign into Yahoo!Groups and head over to the page for LordPeter and sign up. LordPeter is a restricted list, but the approval process is minimal--it's mainly there to weed out spambots; you'll be added within 24 hours. (It can take up to 24 hours for a moderator to get to the request and for the database to update. Do not panic if you are not immediately added.)

You will have to go through through this process if you wish to have access to any of the archives, shared files, or bookmarks for the group. Even if you opt to subscribe via email. Linking email addresses to Yahoo IDs is not something the listowner or moderator can do for you--you have to do it for yourself.

That said, here are the email commands for subscription, unsubscription, and a few other things:

• : Subscribe
• : Unsubscribe.
• : Set your subscription to receive individual posts.
• : Set your subscription to receive digests.

For these commands, all you need to do is send an empty email to the appropriate address.

The last way (and probably the simplest) is to enter your email address below and click the button:
 

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Again, if you choose to subscribe via email or via the above form, you will have to go through the process to link your email address to a Yahoo ID. And again, this is not something the moderators or listowner can do for you--they can try to help if you get stuck, but they cannot go into Yahoo and set it up for you. In rare and extreme cases, you may have to unsubscribe and re-subscribe via the website.

A note for those of you who read the list via the web or in digest form: please take a few minutes to check out Peg Duthie's (Sylvia Marriott) digest tips--there's a lot of good information there for everyone, in fact.

We've undertaken the fourth read-through of The Corpus. We're doing them in publication order this time. Here's the schedule. In the past, we have read the books according to internal chronology and thematically.

We use a series of abbreviations in order to save typing time--here's the list.

Due to the increasing size of the list (over 1,000 at this writing), a few general guidelines have been put into place. We strongly encourage everyone to review these guidelines. If you have any questions about the appropriateness of a post, feel free to contact a moderator for clarification and/or assistance.

By joining LordPeter, you have agreed to abide by our code of conduct. Repeated failure to do so after warnings will result in your membership being terminated.

Please read the following carefully. We have very few rules here, but we appreciate every member obeying them.

• Common courtesy is expected of all members. This includes following accepted netiquette standards for posting, including snipping all but what is absolutely necessary from quoted material, changing subject lines to reflect the actual subject of your post when necessary, and marking all off-topic posts as OT in the subject line. We request that off-topic conversations be kept to a minimum, and that they be moved off-list entirely if they begin to take on a lengthy shelf-life. We ask specifically that you do not send a post with Digest Number XXX in the subject line. We ask that you make an effort to not forward the entirety of lengthy posts, or worse, the entire digest, to the list.
• Common courtesy also includes following the standardized grammatical rules of English. The moderators understand that many of our members are non-native English speakers and allowances are indeed made for them, as well as for members who may have a learning disability. The moderators also do not expect perfection, but we will not tolerate laziness or the conventions of other lists as an excuse. What we do expect is that members will not use excessive "net chat" (e.g., "ur" for your, etc.) and that every effort to use standard punctuation and spelling will be made. We ask that all members take the time to proofread their posts for punctuation, grammatical conventions such as standardized capitalization, and clarity (especially when incorporating quoted material). Posts full of white space and carets, or which contain no capital letters, are extremely difficult to read. Failure to conform will result in the member being placed on moderated status indefinitely. Be advised that the List Owner has a pathological aversion to carets in particular, so seeing posts with rows upon rows of them is liable to incur her wrath. So are posts that donıt contain a single capital letter.
• Members who have questions/concerns about the inner workings of LordPeter should address them privately, off-list, to LordPeter-owner@yahoogroups.com. Please do not post Nom Requests to the list, or instigate discussion of administrative posts on-list. The moderators are happy to address questions privately, but would prefer that the list not be eaten by meta discussions like these.
• Please do not repost any offensive, obscene, or inappropriate messages to the list--doing so only ensures that theyıll be viewed more than once. The moderators are on guard for this type of problem and will move quickly to eliminate it. If you have a particular concern about a post, address those concerns to a moderator. If you are ever unsure about whether a post you wish to make is appropriate, feel free to contact a moderator. Thatıs what weıre here for.
• Please do not ever post any type of virus/worm warning to the list. LordPeter is set to strip attachments specifically to prevent viruses/worms from being transmitted to the membership. Also, most virus "warnings" are often better categorized as "hoaxes"; if you are not sure whether yours is or not, take the time to verify it through one of these sites:
  • McAfee: commercial site, but has information on hoaxes
  • Symantec: another commercial site; scroll about halfway down the page to the encyclopedia section
  • Urban Legends Reference Pages: Virus Hoaxes and Realities (Their main page is also a great resource for checking out those mass-forwarded emails as well.)
• Off-topic and commercial solicitations are never permitted. This includes sites which listmembers may have a financial or academic interest in. In other words, if you stand to profit financially from people visiting the site, or if you are looking for academic recognition, forget it. Offering an extra copy of a book to members is fine, and the moderators reserve the right to make exceptions to this rule provided what is being offered may be of general interest to the group. Otherwise, there is a zero tolerance policy in place, so if youŒre not sure, ask; any off-topic solicitations will be addressed, off-list, by a moderator. Depending on the nature of the posting, the moderators retain the right to place the listmember on moderated status. If you feel the site would be of interest to the membership as a whole, please contact a moderator prior to posting for clearance. Posting a link to clarify a point of discussion, or to direct interested members to a site that is specifically related to the Corpus (an example of this would be a site on bell-ringing) is, naturally, acceptable and does not require moderator clearance.
• Off-list, private communications between members, or between a member and a moderator, should never be reposted to LordPeter without the expressed, written permission of all parties involved, and any member or moderator who deliberately or maliciously violates this rule will be removed from the member roster immediately. This can sometimes be a problem when privately responding to a post from the Yahoogroups page, so take the time to double-check the send to: line and save yourself the embarrassment.

Intellectual Property Notice: All posts, files, and information/ideas posted or archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LordPeter/ remain the intellectual and actual property of the original author and may not be shared or forwarded without their expressed written permission. Individuals found deliberately violating this policy will be removed from the list and permanently banned. In other words, what is written for the LordPeter list stays within the confines of the list unless you have written permission to republish or publicly share it elsewhere.

This site may be useful for those looking for more information about copyright: 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained

The tradition of taking noms for discussion purposes seems to have started on the DOROTHY-L mystery discussion list,where, for fun, members take the names of mystery-related characters and use them to sign their posts. This tradition has been continued by HOUNDS-L, the Sherlockian discussion group, and RUSS-L, the Laurie R. King discussion group. Shortly after LordPeter was founded, we decided that we'd use noms as well.
Here are a few basic guidelines for nom use:

• Noms may be taken from any work of fiction by Dorothy L. Sayers.
• Both character names and descriptive phrases are accepted.
• No one may take Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, or Mervyn Bunter as a nom. There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule.
• The following noms have been permanently retired in honor of their original owners, who are greatly missed:
• Mr Ingleby, in memory of Wayne Swift, who died in January 2001.
• Three Mice Courant, in memory of David Ibbetson, who died in March 2005.
• Robert Templeton's Tailor, in memory of Barbara Greene, who died in August 2005.
• Mary Whittaker, in memory of Muriel "Murray" Horowit, who died in October 2007.
• Miss Burrows, in memory of Francine Swift, who died in October 2007.

The person in charge of approving all noms is Sarah Novak (Mrs Goodacre). To find out the availability of a nom and to register the nom of your choice, email her at .

There is a noms database at Yahoo!Groups (you may have to log in to access it). Please do not add noms to the database yourself, as it will make the Noms Magistra cross.

Also, if you currently have a nom and are planning on permanently unsubscribing from the list, do let the Noms Magistra know, so she can add the nom back to the pool. Also, if you know that your absence will be temporary, let her know that so she doesn't assume you've left permanently and let someone else snag your nom.

LordPeter has also spawned a few other sub-lists, mostly dedicated to the discussion of specific authors. They're all located at Yahoo!Groups. Some of these groups do require membership in LordPeter, while others are open to the public.

DorothyLSayers: For discussion of Sayers's non-Lord Peter works, including her religious writings and essays. (membership in LP not required)

LordPeterVideo: a group devoted to the circulation of tapes of the various television adaptations of the Corpus

LordPeter- Projects: discussion list for the participants of various list projects. Membership in this group is limited to current project participants, as well as the moderators of LordPeter.

Many listmembers have uploaded files to the shared files area at Yahoo!Groups. These files contain a wide variety of information, including illustrations, maps, floor plans, poems based upon our noms, and fan fiction.

There is also a collection of links that may be found to be useful.

Note: I am not sure if you can go directly to those sections of Yahoo!Groups from here or if you need to be signed into you Yahoo!Groups and proceed from there..

Every month, birthday greetings are posted to the list--to join in the monthly celebration, submit your name and nom, as well as your birthday (exact year not required!) to our Birthday Minder, .

Created: March 19, 2001
Updated: March 28, 2006