How your post looks is important:

4. HOW OFTEN ARE DIGESTS SENT?

About daily. It depends on the moderators' available time, the number of posts coming in, and Internet traffic.

5. CAN WE RECEIVE POSTS INDIVIDUALLY RATHER THAN IN DIGEST FORM?

No. We only publish a moderated digest.

6. DO YOU HAVE TO HAVE A LARGE FAMILY TO SUBSCRIBE?

No. The size of your family is not the real issue. The real issue is, are you obeying God? Do you believe that He ultimately controls the womb, in both His precepts and decrees? If you believe this, and live accordingly, then you share the "quiver full" conviction.

God doesn't give everyone children, and certainly not an equal number of children to all families. We have no "minimum entry requirement" in this regard. We also welcome young married couples (who haven't had time to bear many children), older couples (who are past childbearing age) who are in accord with our principles, and couples who have repented of a past surgical sterilization.

You might have arrived at QF convictions subsequent to being surgically sterilized, or after reaching an age where childbearing is over. You are still very welcome.

7. WHERE CAN I FIND SOME GOOD BOOKS ON THIS SUBJECT?

See our Resources section of the Web site:

8. WHAT IF MY QUESTION'S BEEN ANSWERED ALREADY? I DON'T WANNA SOUND STOOPID.

Many topics have indeed been covered. But there are always new subscribers, and long-time subscribers with new insights. And we all need encouragement in the same areas from time to time. If you express your personality and experience, even old questions will be newly interesting.

It is prudent to just read the digest for a few weeks, perhaps responding to existing topics, before you attempt to start a new thread of discussion. This will give you a better feel for what is appropriate.

9. HEY WAIT ... DID SOMEBODY REALLY ASK THAT LAST QUESTION?

Oh-oh. You caught us. We made up some of these questions ourselves. Think of "FAQ" as not just "frequently asked questions" but also "questions that ought to be asked (and answered) frequently". Your participation in a moderated digest requires that you be informed of how things are supposed to work.

9a. A MODERATED DIGEST? WHAT'S THAT?

Quiver-Full! is unlike almost all other Internet forums: The moderators carefully select what is published in each digest. Moderation helps filter out the advertising, idle conversation, wandering topics, and pointless controversies that degrade most Internet forums. This cultivates a discussion which is concise, direct, and rich in content regarding our chartered purposes. It is worth reading, and worthy of your effort writing.

Quiver-Full! has grown in subscribers to the point where we must be strictly selective about what is published. Without this editing, the digest quickly becomes overly long and the discussion too off-topic to maintain the focused interest of our readers. Many readers do not understand this, and think that the digest is an informal chat among a few friends, where casual thoughts and drifting topics are of interest. The temptation to post off-topic comments is strong, if only because there is so little off-topic material allowed, that you know your off-topic post will get a lot of attention. But you must appreciate the effort of producing a specialized publication to a large circulation. If off-topic material is allowed to dilute the chartered purposes of the digest, then subscribers lose interest, and less topical material is posted, and in the end, the publication loses both circulation and content.

9b. HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHAT TO INCLUDE?

Ask yourself two questions when you write a post:

1. Does this post directly and *uniquely* relate to large families or obeying God in childbearing, in a manner consistent with the charter?
2. Is this the best forum for this post or is there another that would be more appropriate?

The QF Digest began because there are certain topics of common interest or which have unusual "angles" for full-quiver families, such as:

• Theology: the fruitfulness mandate, providence in conception.
• Family matters: child-rearing in a large family, parenting in middle-age, adoption
• Divisions: dealing with critical relatives, a spouse who disagrees, unsupportive churches and denominations, neighbors, the government, comments (good or bad) from strangers, defense against enemies (feminists, zero-population zealots, eugenists)
• Physical matters: pregnancy, nursing, sexuality, infertility, reversal of sterilization, miscarriage, natural spacing, harms from contraception, health risks/benefits of bearing many children
• Fellowship: encouragement, prayer, introductions of newcomers, finding neighboring subscribers, testimonies of QF persuasion, pregnancy and birth announcements, consoling illness and bereavement, sharing photos and personal Web sites, external news of QF import, poetry, humor
• The day-to-day matters: housing, food, furnishings, clothing, budgeting, moving, living on one income, schooling, pets, children's spending, restaurants, vacations, entertainments, pastimes, taxes and tax preferences, anecdotes

We need personal encouragement from our fellows in similar situations, and many of us get this only from those we know through the digest. There are certain aspects of these issues that need to be addressed (and here's the operative phrase again) *as they relate to large and growing families* or *as they relate to those seeking to obey God in childbearing*.

Some topics seem to quickly wander from our purposes as a group. For example, a topic might start out well as nutrition for multiple pregnancies but then turns into herbal nutrition for pregnancy, then turns into herbal nutrition, then turns into growing herbs. Eventually, we're moderating a Hints-from-Heloise group called "growing-houseplants-God's-way."

It's cozy to have general Christian fellowship. In person, we would talk about a variety of things, whatever we like. But in an e-mail forum, the channels are narrow, although they reach very far. Thus we impose the discipline of permitted topics and moderation.

We seek a quiet dignity and order amid the raucous, worldly fray of the Internet. Quiver-Full! is a polite forum. We have a "dress code" of sorts. The Internet is a shabby place, and we ask you to "wipe your feet" and "close the door" when coming inside.

10. WHY ARE POSTS EDITED, RETURNED FOR REVISION, OR OUTRIGHT REJECTED?

Oh, lots of technical or netiquette reasons! And a few serious ones. The value of a moderated digest is that the information is selected. If little was ever rejected, there would be no need for a moderator. So you should not let a returned post hurt your feelings. You should consider why it happened and understand how to avoid it. You should not criticize the moderators, or start private debates with them, because of these policies or an application of them.

Here are some of the reasons:

• a. Your post is "off-topic", by far the most common reason we omit posts. After some years, we've accumulated an unpublished list of topics that wander into outer space, lead to pointless controversy, or just have little or nothing to do with the purposes of the digest. In the interest of tone, quality, and peace, the moderators reserve the right to subjectively omit posts. This *does* *not* *mean* we don't like your ideas, that your post wasn't well written, or that we think you are stupid. Many topics are important and worthy, yet do not belong in Quiver-Full!

  Always try your idea against the questions at the start of question #9 above before writing a post or sending it in.

  Sometimes posts contain both on-topic and off-topic material. In such cases we may edit your post, by removing the off-topic portion(s) and retaining the rest, rather than rejecting it outright.

  Don't assume that because an off-topic post appears in a digest that everyone is permitted to jump in. Off-topic items do appear if for no other reason than merely being overlooked.

  If you have a well-written, but still off-topic post, it would certainly be welcome for publication somewhere on the Internet. For example, if you were to post about floor coverings, the Usenet newsgroup misc.consumers.house has a wealth of expertise and interested listeners available.

  Do not presume that a widely-read publication like the digest would make a good place to broadcast off-topic ideas. Do not think that everyone will "just skip over it" if they're not interested. One of the reasons the digest is widely read is because it is focused, concise, and free of distractions. Diluting the content with extraneous topics ultimately spoils this fineness and drives away readers.

  Good publishing, even on the Internet, is not about shoveling out all possible content and letting readers pick what they want. If that were true we'd just mail everyone the entire Web every day and "just let them skip over what they don't want". Nor is it about "freedom of speech". That freedom begins and ends with our charter, which is a contract between the readers and contributors, administered and enforced by the moderators.

  "Aha!" we sometimes hear. "You are allowing a discussion on off-topic thread X, so why can't I start on off-topic thread on Y." One must appreciate that ongoing discussions drift, and often they drift far from their topical moorings, but very gradually, so that a clear off-topic leap never occurs. But the presence of such a gradual slide is not a justification to start another off-topic thread.

• b. The address that you sent your post from, isn't on our list of subscribers. To the list moderation software, this makes you a "stranger" and your post automatically "bounces" (that is, gets returned or deleted).

  Post from the e-mail address where you receive the digest. Don't use a spouse or business account (unless you also subscribe there).

• c. You didn't include a thoughtful subject, tsk, tsk. If you just hit the reply button you will get a meaningless "Re: DIGEST #XXXX" subject. This makes the digest index hard to read and will make your contribution hard to index later. It is also a flag that you may have inadvertently quoted the whole previous digest while posting a reply.

  Edit the message to include a thoughtful "Subject:". Use the same one as others are using for the same item of discussion; then your response will be indexed with the others in the archives, and your wisdom will be available as a benefit to many others in the future.

• d. Your post ended with a long signature, street address, or phone number, perhaps appended automatically by your mailer software.

  Embellished signatures are a bit of "Internet culture" which clash with the style of the QF digest. Keep your personal signature to one, or perhaps two or three, genuinely informative lines, no more, like your real name, your city, or your Web site URL (if you have one). Anything longer than that is too much. Adorning your signature with bars or pictures made from characters is trite and clutters up the digest. A short Bible verse is OK, but change it each time or it will seem trite, too. "Bumper sticker" and other cute slogans are inappropriate.

  Remember that you are contributing to a long digest which is assembled from many contributors and published to a very wide audience. Unlike your personal correspondence, hundreds of people must sort through your words, and your brevity and directness are crucial. Every word should respect the audience and not be redundant or automatic. Every ten idle words become ten thousand in publication.

  Your signature must be just a signature: the "who" and "where" of your authorship. Do not repeat incidental information like your spouse's name, your family size, your state of mind, etc. Such details should be in your introductory post, or you may cite them in the body of your message if they are somehow particularly relevant to your point.

  Keep your signature elementary. Do not misuse it to slip in text that otherwise would be rejected. Express your thoughts in the body of your message.

  If someone needs your street address or phone number, send it to them directly. Don't put that information in your signature (or in a post, for that matter).

  Don't repeat your e-mail address in your signature or in the body of your message. The digest will already show it in the "From:" heading of your post.

• e. Your post does not appear consistent with the minimal doctrinal standards stated on the charter page of the Web site:
  • a. Belief in the Trinity: God the Father, the Son of God Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
  • b. The inerrancy, sufficiency and authority of the Holy Bible as the only inspired word of God.
  • c. The atonement for our sins by Jesus Christ for those who believe.
  • d. The sanctity of marriage expressed only in a monogamous lifelong relationship between one man and one woman.

  We rarely see problems with (a), or (d).

  We often receive posts apparently in conflict with (b), where people claim that God is giving them truth or counsel beyond what is in the Bible, such as through feelings, "being led", circumstances, strange coincidences, voices, visions, "fleeces", "God told me", "God moved my heart", or prayer. Many people use such language without understanding the conflict it presents to the sufficiency of the Scriptures.

  We would rather have you exhort and encourage from God's word alone, which we believe is sufficient for our guidance. It usually isn't difficult for a contributor to rewrite a post to conform to this policy. We don't mean to exclude anyone with a gentle disagreement in this area, as long as this area of contention remains subdued in the public discussion.

  We have also encountered some oblique questioning of (c) related to advocacy of an "age of accountability" for infants, but since that is mostly off-topic it hasn't been an ongoing problem.

  It should be clear that our doctrinal positions come from a theologically conservative, Protestant point of view. If you hold to something very different, you will need to subdue your opinions if you wish to participate, just as we try to be tolerant and welcoming.

  The point here is that these seemingly simple articles can have far-reaching implications. Subscribers are often unaware of these implications or unaware of the historic controversies in the church surrounding these doctrines.

• f. You sent copied material like a broadcast message, joke collections, inspirational stories, or a-child-is-dying tales of crisis. Or, you sent an original message, but one which you cross-posted to other forums like newsgroups or other mailing lists.

  Digest readers earnestly want to read what *you* have written *yourself* just for *us* on our special topics of interest. Can you send us something original that won't be found elsewhere?

• g. Your post responds with only a short sentiment like "Amen" or "thanks".

  If that is all you care to say, send it privately to the contributor instead; it means more that way. On the other hand, if you have thoughts elaborating on WHY you agree, DO post them. A daily digest is not conducive to a chat-style conversation, so write posts that are thoughtful, substantial, and which others can think about and respond to. It is the substance of this kind of exchange between us that best expresses fellowship in this medium.

  If someone else's post hurt you in some way, consider responding privately. If the issue warrants a public response from you, then explain your reaction, instead of just sounding off.

• h. Your post quotes material which is too lengthy or which could cause us legal trouble. Most often we're concerned about copyright infringement in this regard. Short quotations should always be fine.

  Rewrite your post so that it doesn't include lengthy quotations. Summarize in your own words, or give just the reference to another publication (like a book or Web site). For items like your favorite poetry, you must provide a copyright release from any third parties involved.

• i. Your post contains ribaldry. This can happen inadvertently because the culture is continually inventing new naughty words that we adopt naively. We're not squeamish or prudes (medical and sexual discussions get very frank sometimes), but neither do we want a coarse tone.

  Rewrite your post in a more genteel tone.

• j. Your post contains a commercial solicitation or a plea for donations.

  The Internet has lately been infested with inappropriate commerce. The digest should be a quietly spiritual forum, free of the bustle of advertising and selling. We seek a haven from worldly noise that distracts us from our holy conversation.

  Many contributors have a business or profession that constitute a large part of their respective identities. One line of signature to publicize this is OK at the end of genuine posts. Any more and we send you a bill for advertising (just kidding). But do keep it to one line if it's commercial.

  "Commercial" activity for this purpose includes home businesses and even items you are selling casually; in short, anything involving trade of goods, services, or money. Some personal Web pages purport to be non-commercial, but still try to sell something or contain advertising banners selling things at other sites. If you promote such a page, even if it is your own, we still consider it commercial for the purposes of this policy.

  If you refer to a Web site or other resource that you own or benefit from, use language that discloses that relationship, or keep it within your signature. We consider "non-disclosure" promotions less than honest. They taint your referral with a suspicious air.

  Pleas for donations to individuals or causes, or collections for gifts to or relief of fellow subscribers, are not authorized by the Quiver-Full! charter, and are not appropriate for the digest. We regret that even some things like prayer requests regarding personal financial or household difficulties can fall into this limitation. For this reason, you should avoid mentioning your personal financial difficulties.

• k. You're trying to make money off your friends in Quiver-Full!

  Examples of such posts would be a chain letter, easy-money scheme, multi-level marketing recruitment, Internet coupon/discount trading/sharing, make-money-by- or (solve-world-hunger-by-) Web-surfing schemes, and any of the other petty frauds popular on the Internet. Sometimes valued subscribers get involved with such silliness, so it happens.

  Useful Web sites on this topic: http://www.snopes.com (Hoaxes, scams and frauds exposed)

  If you are mercenary enough to try to chum up traffic for a Web site on Quiver-Full! so you can make money from banner advertising: we brook no such subterfuge.

  Bulk e-mailing to addresses you've harvested from the digest is a serious affront to both the moderators and the subscribers, as well as a copyright infringement. We know whenever someone tries this because the list is seeded. So don't try.

• l. You're a phony subscriber sending spam. Go away. We already cancelled your subscription and put you on a list of banned addresses without further notice. Tough, eh? But then you wouldn't be reading this. So we won't waste any more words on that.
• m. The moderators happened to be overworked and cranky lately, and your post required some kind of manual effort on their part.

  Try again later.

• n. The digest is down while the moderators are on vacation. You should get an automatic response giving an explanation of what happened and what to do about it, like "try again later."
• o. Your post refers to broken URLs.

  Check all your URLs before putting them in a post. We will not knowingly accept dead links. There's no point in you citing them just so hundreds of people can be frustrated.

• p. Your post strongly promotes "alternative medicine" or strongly criticizes "mainstream medicine".

  Giving and taking medical advice over the Internet is a very difficult and complex issue. We are not opposed to discussing medicine or informing others about alternatives. But neither do we want to provoke controversy with (or outright promote) medical ideas that aren't proven to be safe and effective. Nor do we want to promote the illusion that you can skip a physician's diagnosis by soliciting advice from those who have had similar cases.

  We believe that the licensed medical profession is dedicated to scientific judgments about safety and efficacy, despite the occasional errors and blind spots. We reject extreme views such as: the mainstream "system" is inherently evil, or intends to harm us for the sake of profits or to protect against malpractice, or surpresses alternative, "natural", or "herbal" treatments that are safe and effective.

  In 1994, the US Congress and President Clinton barred the FDA from regulating "dietary supplements" (chiefly, herbal remedies, even though these are not food in the usual sense) with the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act (DSHEA). Such products now meet no legal standards for safety, effectiveness, purity, or contents. Herb merchants now have a legal loophole to make unsupported, often false, medical claims. A flood of such publicity has corrupted the popular understanding of medicine, and these ideas regularly appear in posts to the digest. In extreme cases, anti-Christian philosophies such as New Age thinking or post-modernism are the basis for attacking scientific medical knowledge. It sounds as if the two sides of this controversy are speaking different languages, with only one based on evidence and critical thinking.

  Since the moderators aren't themselves medical doctors and don't have time to investigate alternative claims, they screen posts by relying on authoritative scientific standards like the _Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy_ (http://www.merckmanual.com) and _Griffith's 5-Minute Clinical Consult_ (http://www.5mcc.com).

  We may accept posts that simply give your own history ("I tried X for my Y complaint, and my Y went away), or that make tentative suggestions for alternative medicine. Those expressing alternative views naturally tend to be vocal, while following conventional views doesn't often excite comment because it's so, well, conventional. Expressions of paranoid fears, crusading against "the system", or horror stories designed to poison the well of modern medicine are not welcome.

  If your post is returned for this reason, you can either tone down your claims and resubmit the post, change it to refer your readers to another forum where alternative medicine is promoted, or forward it to another forum altogether.

  A related problem involves posts which solicit medical advice from the general readership. This puts the moderators in the difficult position of having to review unlimited responses varying from expert knowledge to downright cranks. There is also a dilemma that many such questions are either too minor to be on-topic, or are so serious that bad advice ought not to be published, either. Publishing each and every opinion is not the goal of this digest. However, if you can cast your question in such a form as to bring out a medical issue of peculiar interest to QF people, rather than sound like someone who wants free advice to avoid the need for a medical doctor, then you have a much better chance of having it published.

  Useful Web sites on giving or taking medical advice: http://www.hcrc.org Health Care Reality Check http://www.quackwatch.com Quack Watch

• q. You're losing your temper.

  Controversial topics aren't necessarily "off" topics, but you might lose your temper in the heat of a controversy. We talk about deep things in Quiver-Full!, and occasionally emotions and language get too strong. Silly quarrels have also occurred. In such cases the moderators may act as a "referee", pulling apart two boxers in a clutch.

  You should either tone down or take your quarrel "outside".

• r. Your message has HTML tags.

  Turn off HTML in your mailer! Microsoft Outlook has annoyed the world and made trouble for our digest by turning on this obscure mis-feature by default. In Outlook, select the menu Tools+Options, then the "Send" tab, and set "Mail sending format" to "Plain text", not "HTML".]

  (This problem has been obviated by our newer software which filters out the problematic formats. But it's still a good idea to turn off HTML.)

• s. Your post contains a factual error, or is suspect in that regard.

  It is easy to post casually without checking facts. If you make an error that is relevant to your point, we might catch it and return your post for correction. For example, you might mis-attribute a quotation or give the wrong name for a medicine.

  Correct your post and resubmit it. Don't let your feelings be hurt.

• t. Letter-writing or petition-passing campaigns are usually off-topic.

  You should write your friends privately if you have a worthy cause that deserves this kind of drum-beating action. If you're not willing to make that effort privately, and expecting the digest to do it for you, then it might be wise to re-evaluate how dedicated your convictions are.

  We may occasionally make an exception if a particularly QF issue is urgently at stake.

• u. You're posting about housekeeping (cooking, recipes, sewing, cleaning, laundry, diapers, home decorating, furnishings, etc) during a time when posts are too frequent on such topics.

  We permit a small amount of discussion of these mundane matters in their relevance to running a large household. Since they are not really the "heart" of our Quiver-Full! concerns, we do limit the volume in any given digest. There are plenty of Internet forums specializing in these topics, where you will likely have a better-informed discussion anyway.

• v. You misquoted or poorly paraphrased a Bible verse.

  Using verses is good, but be careful if you do it from memory. We prefer you give Bible quotes verbatim, using quotation marks and a verse reference. Your application will be more authoritative, and your readers can look up the text for additional study. Paraphrasing from memory can be dangerously inaccurate.

• w. You are disparaging someone, or revealing very private information.

  Be especially careful when discussing third persons. Your words will be sent literally around the world and will persist forever, and you cannot control who reads them, now or in the future. Scary.

  We are especially unwilling to allow the digest to advertise your personal discord. Do not send posts critical of your spouse, even if he or she is not a Christian believer or not a QF advocate. Be careful in discussing child-rearing that you do not disparage your children. Speak respectfully of your extended family and your church. Cloaking critcisms in "prayer requests" is no excuse.

  Publicizing private information about third parties may also be disparaging. For example, don't use the digest to discuss family secrets.

  Be careful in debates with other subscribers. Debates can turn into personal attacks rather than well-grounded discussions. Don't respond in kind if you are the victim of acrimony.

  Please don't refer to an unborn baby as an "it". Such use of the neuter pronoun is jarring to the pro-life sensibility.

• x. Your post is in some "loud" typographical format.

  We commonly make typographical changes to keep a consistent presentation in the digest: reflowing paragraphs, lower-casing WORDS that YOU MIGHT be trying to emphasize TOO FREQUENTLY with all-caps, remove ellipses ("..."), removing rows of asterisks or hyphens, and generally any format that tries to be distinctive from other posts or which uses a distracting style. Much of this task is handled automatically by our software, but some of it can't be, and we don't like being "janitors" when we should be moderating content. Changing such presentation formats does not alter the substance of your text. We want you to attract attention with good prose, and not with typographical style.

• y. You got scooped on some news by another subscriber.

  You might post to report some item of news. Others may have already made similar posts, but before you could have seen their posts in a digest. We will omit repetitive or redundant posts in such cases.

• z. Your post involves popular, controversial teachers, like the Ezzos or Bill Gothard, who are for or against QF principles.

  Let's leave the distant personalities out of our discussion and stick to the issues.

• aa. Your post asks for a personal reply by private email.

  Asking for private replies is sometimes appropriate, but usually it isn't. When conversations are deliberately drained into private exchanges, then the vitality of the digest suffers. The digest is not primarily an introduction service for the purpose of hailing others off into a corner where the rest of us can't benefit.

  We're not saying you shouldn't make new friends from the digest or exchange private correspondence with them (that's why we include e-mail addresses in posts), just that you shouldn't impolitely use the digest to broadcast private invitations.

  Asking for private replies on something off-topic is itself off-topic (see above).

• ab. Your post pertains to matters of a local interest only.

  The digest is a world-wide publication. Asking such an audience for for local information ("what's a good church in West Undershirt, Wyoming"; "who's a good doctor in ...") isn't appropriate. Consider how almost everyone (hundreds, if not thousands) of readers will be needlessly distracted. Consider that if even a small proportion of our subscribers posted such requests, we would all have nothing else to read. It also seems that these questions rarely get the answer hoped for.

• ac. You asked an open-ended question that will likely generate a flood of replies, where virtually everyone is compelled to "check-in".

  Many questions, some of them even good ones, provoke too many responses or "cast the net" too broadly. Once, in a running thread that went on for weeks, one after the other subscriber gave an inventory of personal habits (movies watched, teetotaler or not, clothing styles). This was purportedly a celebration of the diversity of QF lifestyles, but each such post seemed to provoke a chain reaction of several more self-descriptions, ad infinitum. The thread was certainly interesting, but the conclusion had to be simply, "Wow, there are lot of things that don't matter to being QF," to which the natural response is, "Why are we trying to enumerate the universe of things that don't matter".

  Try to frame your questions so as to provoke a focused, limited, and on-topic response. Don't ask, "Who likes ice cream? What flavor?" And absolutely do not post any question which demands a response from all subscribers ("Where is everyone from?").

• ad. More stuff is added to this list all the time.

10.1. WHAT'S ARE THESE "[MODERATOR: ...]" COMMENTS INTERSPERSED IN POSTS?

That's the moderators speaking on behalf of the charter or the interests of the subscribers as a whole.

The moderators of the digest have two main duties: (1) To receieve prospective posts from contributors, and then accept, reject, trim, or return-for-revision those posts; and (2) To guide and clarify the digest text by interspersing comments as needed. When commenting in the digest next to someone else's post, the moderator(s) will identify their separate comments with a "[MODERATOR: ...]" bracketing, so as to avoid any confusion over who is speaking, a contributor or a moderator.

10.2. A POST SAYS TO "REPLY BY E-MAIL PRIVATELY." WHY? HOW DO I DO THAT?

This means that the contributor of the post (or sometimes the moderators) want any replies not to go the digest, but directly back to individual contributor. Look at the top of the particular post you're reading and observe the "From:" line's e-mail address of the contributor. If you want to reply, compose a new e-mail message, entering that address as the "To:" recipient. You can type the address in by hand, or go through the clipboard cut-and-paste method to avoid errors.

Be careful you don't impolitely invite private replies. See question 9, section aa, above.

10.3. SO MANY THINGS SEEM TO BE OFF-TOPIC. CAN'T I SOLICIT PRIVATE E-MAIL TO TAKE THEM UP?

Well, that's also off-topic, isn't it? There are usually better ways to do this, so we discourage it. If you want to converse about an off-topic matter, the best ways are to use another forum that covers that topic, or to invite subscribers you know personally via private e-mail (not a post broadcast on the digest). We don't inhibit private conversations, but the digest is not a "hailing channel" to enlist a quorum for non-QF subjects. On a few occasions, discussions that wandered off-topic in QF have been redirected through the digest to other forums.

11. ARE ALL QUIVER-FULL! SUBSCRIBERS ALIKE? BAREFOOT MOMS IN DENIM JUMPERS?

No. While some subscribers ARE barefoot moms in denim jumpers, we are quite a diverse group. Some are women that only wear dresses, some wear pants. Some are men (who look funny in denim jumpers). Some of the women bear children at home, some at a hospital (and some in the car in between). Some homeschool, some don't. Some are Calvinists, some are Arminian, some don't know, some just don't say; most are Protestant christians in keeping with our doctrinal standards, although there are a few Roman Catholics. Some eat whole-earth foods, some eat chocolate and Big Macs. Most are from the USA, but many are elsewhere. For some couples, both spouses are QF minded. For others, only one is. And still others are seeking and want to learn more. Some have adopted, some have only children they've borne. Some have more than a dozen children, some have only a few, yet others have none. Some are country mice, some are city mice. Some use the real Internet, some use AOL ;)

11.1 DO YOU BELIEVE PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE AS MANY BABIES AS POSSIBLE?! THAT CONTRACEPTION IS NEVER PERMISSIBLE?

That is a very leading question. What we promote is obedience to the Lord with regard to having children. We believe "birth control" usurps God in His providence from multiplying or limiting our children.

Fertility and fecundity, while blessings from God, are not ends in themselves. Quiver-full convictions are not a "prosperity gospel" with babies substituted for wealth. We would oppose intervening efforts of a healthy couple to speed up conception, such as deliberately limiting nursing or using drugs, which would seem to be interfering with God's providence and design. Another example would be a hypothetical medical technology to delay menopause, if it were to become available, which we would oppose for the same reason.

There are many difficult ethical questions about Quiver-Full! principles. Some hold that medically treating infertility is wrong and that infertility should just be accepted as a manifestation of God's will; others feel that infertility is an illness that should be medically treated. Another perplexing question is whether we should conceive children in cases where there is a likelihood of miscarriage or other harm. If pregnancy will certainly demand a medical intervention such as a caesarean section, is the duty of childbearing diminished? Such "hard cases" involve deep issues of life and death.

There would seem to be no simple answers to such questions, and the digest does not dictate a position on such finely-divided distinctions. These are often the subjects of lengthy discussions and debates.

12. WHERE CAN I GET A COPY OF THE BOOK _A FULL QUIVER_ BY RICK AND JAN HESS?

See the QuiverFull Resources section of the Web site.

13. CAN I SUBSCRIBE FROM FREE E-MAIL SERVICES (JUNO, HOTMAIL, YAHOO, ETC.)?

Yes, but there are minor problems. For example, Juno will not deliver the digest to you if it exceeds some rather small size (about 20 pages or so, technically 64K bytes, which they could also change any time). Lately the digest has grown to this size once a week or so. These "free" services also paste a tacky billboard on the end of your posts that the moderators must painstakingly edit off by hand. Think of a bumper sticker getting stuck on your car every time you park somewhere. This can make a lot of work for the moderators and consequently the digest quality can suffer.

The costliest trouble with these services is the time the moderators expend just *explaining* the inevitable technical problems to subscribers asking, "what went wrong, where's my digest!". These services are not really "free" because of such overhead, despite the "easy-to-use, easy-to-sign-up" appeal. We recommend you use real Internet access and e-mail if you can afford it, although we'll understand if you can't. In many locales, public libraries or other institutions offer free e-mail without these limitations.

The free e-mail service described at: http://www.mailandnews.com

seems to be the best available right now. You can read e-mail from the Web or download it to your own PC mailer software. This does require that you already have an Internet connection, however, so it's not like Juno's free dial-up email service.

13.5 I DON'T CHECK E-MAIL VERY OFTEN, BUT WHEN I DO, I'M MISSING SOME DIGESTS.

Your service provider probably imposes an e-mail "quota" that is reached when you don't download your mail very often. Once your mailbox is full (perhaps with old issues of the digest), later digest issues "bounce" (don't get delivered at all). As a result, when you finally connect and download your mail, you will not have gotten delivery of the most recent issues.

Although we usually receive a notice from your service when your mail bounces, we cannot possibly afford to chase down such problems: about 1 percent of our list members experience a transient delivery failure on any given day. If you're really stuck with a problem we will try to help if you send a %private e-mail message.

The only solutions are to either check your mail more often, or use a different service that doesn't impose a quota.

13.6 I HAD AN E-MAIL PROBLEM THAT WAS FIXED, BUT NOW I GET NO DIGESTS AT ALL.

Send another %subscribe. If your digest e-mail bounces often enough, or your service provider says your account is closed, you are automatically unsubscribed. We have no way to know if and when your service is restored. If you have flaky Internet service like this, there's really no way for us to solve the problem of automatic unsubscription, short of recommending you find a better provider.

13.7 CAN I GET AN E-MAIL VIRUS FROM YOUR DIGEST?

Almost certainly, no.

We format the digest strictly and deliberately as plain text, because we want the digest to be readable everywhere on any system. Only plain text does that.

The software which assembles the digests has several walls that bar anything but plain text from getting through. (1) It accepts no posts except those in plain text, and (2) It has no capacity to produce anything but plain text in the digest mail piece. So even if someone were to post a viral attachment, and even if it were to escape the the notice of the moderators (they are obvious with the UNIX-based mail reader), and even if it were to somehow slip into a digest, it would simply appear as some gibberish text that wouldn't be interpreted as an attachment by your mail agent when you received it.

Concern about e-mail viruses, however, are probably best addressed by prudent behavior on your part as a recipient rather than expecting clean mail from everyone. You can't guarantee you're not going to get a nasty attachment someday from someone. In short, just don't open attachments unless you know what they are and who they're from; and use a mail reader that won't open them without warning you first.

14. WHAT IS YOUR POLICY ON SUBSCRIBER PRIVACY AND SOLICITATION?

We have a strict privacy policy:

• Your e-mail address as a subscriber will not be disclosed to the digest until you submit a post or introduction. Thus you can "lurk" (subscribing without a public introduction, reading the digest, and not posting) and not have your subscription address published on the digest. Once you post, your e-mail address will appear in a "From:" line with your post, and others have access to it.
• Subscriber lists may not be harvested from digests to be used for spamming. The lists are seeded to detect such use. Please forward any spam messages traceable to Quiver-Full! harvesting to the moderators.

14.5 I HAVE A WEB SITE; WILL YOU LINK TO IT FROM YOUR WEB SITE?

If you are a subscriber, we will link to your individual family page or photo so that other subscribers can get to know you better.

If your site is educational or commercial (in a way related to our charter) we may (repeat, may) maintain a link. We also link to non-subscriber sites with educational or commercial purposes related to our charter.

In any case we expect you to first establish a reciprocal link to our site before requesting a link on ours. We will check your link before we set up ours.

For links to commercial Web sites (see above for our strict definition of "commercial", which may include your family pages), we further require disclosure on the site itself of ownership, including current street addresses and phone numbers. It is helpful if you also describe who you are, what your facilities are, how long you have been in business, etc. Many people want to run a home-based business, which we wholeheartedly support, but also try to appear to be something different.

Maintaining commercial links is not a priority for us, and unless you're a loyal subscriber, we won't bother unless you have something hard to find that isn't available otherwise, like a rare book in our bibliography.

15. WHO OWNS QUIVER-FULL?

Your own individual posts belong to you as the author, and you retain the copyright on them, although you implicitly grant us permission to publish them in the Quiver-Full! Digest (e-mail, archives, CDs, in print, etc). The digest as a compilation, the quiverfull.com domain name and Web site, and the compilation of subscriber addresses, all belong to the moderators, who hold these assets in trust for the benefit of the subscribers pursuant to the goals of the Quiver-Full! charter.

16. WHY ARE YOU QUIVERFULL.COM? NOT QUIVERFULL.ORG? ARE YOU COMMERCIAL?

The domain name quiverfull.org was already taken by a subscriber for their household use by the time we got around to setting up a Web presence. And .com names are slightly more familiar to most people.

17. WHY ARE THE QUIVER-FULL! DIGESTS COPYRIGHTED? CAN I MAKE COPIES?

You need permission of the respective owners to make copies. This is to protect you (a subscriber and author of posts) and the moderators (who own the list itself and the compilations of posts). Authors and list owners throughout the Internet have learned the hard way that they need to control copying and publication of their works. If not, your posts or your e-mail address might be used without your permission for purposes you don't like, or even abused. A copyright can be used to enforce the rights of the subscribers and the moderators to control how the digests are copied and published, both on the Internet and in tangible forms like discs or printed copies. This is especially important due to the sensitive and personal nature of the digest topics. Strictly speaking, the copyright notice on the digest issues is not necessary to secure the copyright, but it does give notice that we are diligent in this regard.

Subscribers may make copies of individual digests for their own personal use or one printed copy to keep or to circulate among friends without e-mail. Re-publication is prohibited.

18. WHO PAYS FOR QUIVER-FULL?

The Quiver-Full! Digest has always been paid for by the moderators, who underwrite the cash expenses of the equipment, Internet services, and software development required, as well as volunteer their time moderating. The digest runs only due to the moderators' subsidy. We have neither asked for nor received donations or other financial compensation. Quiver-Full! is a labor of love in ministry to the subscribers and other readers, in hope of a future, heavenly reward.

19. HOW DID QUIVER-FULL! START? WHAT IS THE HISTORY? WHO ARE THE PRINCIPALS?

• Steve and Beth Jones of Tuscaloosa, Alabama USA were the original moderators and visionaries. They published digest issue #1 on July 11, 1995 to 12 charter subscribers they located through Internet newsgroups.
• With issue #1343 on October 15, 1999, the moderatorship of some 400 subscribers passed to Richard and Holly Kinch of Palm Beach County, Florida USA.
• In June, 2001, with issue #1774 to 1130 subscribers, the moderatorship again changed to Paul and Bethany Vaughn of Brentwood, Tennessee USA.
• Nikki and Brendon Keith from Spring, Texas USA began moderating the digest on January 27th, 2003 starting with issue #2178 going to 1225 members.

You may locate the current list owners through an Internet whois query on the domain name quiverfull.com.