Check my homepage, I have an overview of how ping list work, It's more for the pingee than the pinger but it might be helpful.
I also saved every article that I've pinged on my homepage so you can click them and see a little how it works. It's not that hard, you will get the hang of it after a Ping or two.
When I was first starting the ping list I put this in my tagline in order to get people to sign on and see if there was interest.
(Starting Generation X Ping list - See my home page for details and on how to be added)
I got some to sign up that way but it wasn't until I actually did some pings that the majority of people on my list signed up.
The names of the people on my ping list are on my homepage and when I need to do a ping I cut and paste them into the "To" field. It's probably preferable to keep everybody's name in a notepad *.txt file on your computer if you can, I can be on one of four computers at any given time when making a ping which would make it a real pain to keep all of them updated all the time so I have to have them on my homepage where I can easily grab them from any computer.
and always I put the body in the "Your Reply" section, In my case it's
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social aspects that directly effects Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details.
I've added both of your lists to the ping list index.