The acronym ZEP stands for Zone Enchanted Place. "The Friends Zone" was a mailing list of "Friends" (the television show) fans, and the ZEP was chartered by members of that mailing list. This is why it is called the "Zone" Enchanted Place, even though it no longer has any affiliation with the Friends Zone.
The Enchanted Place part comes from the last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, "In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there". "They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest..."
Originally Roger "CR" Penn began the ZEP on May 8, 1996 (this was the first official mailing) as an organization of dedicated Winnie-the-Pooh fans within The Friends Zone. When it became possible for members to join through the web page, the ZEP was opened to anyone interested. The purpose of the ZEP is for Pooh fans to discuss and exchange ideas about Pooh, share their childhood and present memories, engage in the ever popular Shepard v. Disney debate, etc. Basically, anything Pooh! It's not considered off-topic at all to discuss your personal lives, though...we're very interested if you want to share.
The mailing list is currently closed. The information below is maintained for historical purposes and possible future use only.
We've been in existance for over 10 years, and the regular posters know each other fairly well, so it might be prudent to lurk a bit to get a feel for things. However, we won't mind if you just jump right in and say 'hallo'! You're sure to get many friendly welcomes.
Just a few basic guidelines that we request you try your best to follow. When posting, please stick to plain text and do not send attachments. When responding to posts, please respond in list form and try to include only the pertinent quoted text, instead of sending back an original post and a one or two line response. Please try to keep your .sig file smaller than your response; we aren't going to be strict about this unless it gets ridiculous, and this hasn't happened yet. Also remember that when you hit "reply" to a post, it goes to the sender. You must paste in the ZEP address back in the "to", unless you have your e-mail reader configured otherwise. Finally, if you are having problems with the technical side of the list, please send mail to owner-zep@rogerpenn.org.
Unlike most lists, we do not require that your post be strictly about Pooh. In fact, some days, there will be nothing posted about Pooh at all. This is OK. You will find that this list is more about being a member of a great big family of Pooh lovers who just share and support each other through the ups and downs of life. Of course, if you have something Pooh related, by all means, post it! We do ask that you try to make posts to the list applicable to everyone on the list. Even if your post is mostly personal responses to other's posts, try to at least include just a little bit that pertains to everyone. Obviously, this is a family-type list, and your content should be appropriate. Inappropriate language or content will not be tolerated. Other than that, there is no real constraint on the format or content of your posts.
Urban Legends and Hoaxes have no place here. Urban legends (from Peter van der Linden's alt.folklore.urban FAQ): "An urban legend: appears mysteriously and spreads spontaneously in varying forms and contains elements of humor or horror (the horror often "punishes" someone who flouts society's conventions)." When in doubt, please consult http://www.urbanlegends.com before forwarding. One form of the urban legend is the internet hoax. Please consult http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org before forwarding any virus warnings. Basically we just want to hear about you and Pooh!
We don't have "officers" in the ZEP, just people that have volunteered their time to do certain things that we felt would be fun to do and nice to have! Currently, the following people are donating their talents to make the ZEP function smoothly:
The Zone Enchanted Place Home Page is located at http://www.rogerpenn.org/zep.html and is the official web page for ZEP members. It has resources and tools just for the ZEP as well as promoting the list to to the outside world. It is your resource for ZEP info. There are also links to the best Pooh pages on the web...check em out! Feel free to offer any suggestions as to what you would like to see on the page, because it is your page! This page also has a special member's section accessible only to those subscribed to the list!
The Card Exchange was an idea inspired by the Friends Zone postcard exchange. In order to foster friendship and communication, and to see the variety of Pooh cards out there, we came up with the idea of having a quarterly card exchange by ZEP members. An organizer collects the snail mail addresses of everyone interested and assigns each person the number of snail mail addresses that they wish to send out. Please remember to send your cards if you're participating; imagine how disapointing it would be for someone to go without receiving cards. The only other rule is that the cards be Pooh-related! Note that your postal addresses are handled in accordance with the procedures posted to the list when a Card Exchange is announced.
Just doing a search at Google or any other search engine for "Pooh" will bring a myriad pages up. There is a newsgroup just for Pooh fans at alt.fan.pooh. The Galleons Lap site also contains a page full of links to other Pooh resources.
