I've been meaning to finish this off and send it since December.
The recent discussion about attachments provided the necessary
impetus to do so.
Appended below is the start of a set of "Rules of Participation"
(occasionally referred to as "netiquette") for the shakuhachi
mailing list.
You are invited to offer suggestions, amendations, additions, and, as
always, corrections.
First a few of practical items:
1. Watch your outgoing messages.
Often times email clients (read "programs") like Outlook at Netscape
Mail are setup to include the entire original message in a response
as the default. Learn how to manage your client and turn off that
"feature". Your correspondents will appreciate your thoughtfulness.
And, while it is often useful to include pertinent parts of a
message when responding, it is rarely necessary to include the
entire original messages in your response.
2. Please do not send attachments to the list. This includes Word
documents and PDF files as well as images - regardless of size.
First, the list archiving software does not always deal apppriorately
with attachments. Second, many people have limited disk space for
their mail and one medium size attachment can put them over quota.
And third, there are a number of folks out here who deliberately
use email clients that do not "do" attachments. For those of us,
your attachment looks like a huge block of text garbage.
The preferred way to make images available to people on a mailing
list is to put the on a website and then send the URL (link address)
in the email.
The preferred way to make documents available to people in large
groups is to convert them to PDF (or code them in html) and put
those on a website.
For those without access to a website, or even for those who do,
you are invited to send your image and documents to me (bjones@ucsd.edu)
ahead of time and I'll put them in the shakuhachi mailinglist
website archive and send you the URL to include in your email.
(While I don't usually avail myself of an email client that deals
with attachments, I'm quite happy to switch to one that does when
I have an attachment I want to see.)
3. Please avoid commercial speech. This is a community, not a target
audience. It is one thing to say you have seen a product and to
describe it (including where it's available) or to offer personal
property for sale. It's entirely another to peddle new products
as if this were a flea market and then go on about them in repeated
messages. If people are curious about what you are selling, they
will ask questions off the list.
Now a couple of communal items:
1. When I was growing up we had a rule around our house that was
probably heard in your house as well. The rule stated: "If you
can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything." This
is sound advice for participation on any mailing list and is, as
I understand it, standard Buddhist practice. Practice it, please.
2. This list is about information and community. Ask and answer
questions, make suggestions and announcements, offer [bad] haiku
and [lame] spiritual insights, and participate in the myriad other
ways that have made this list a useful and enjoyable place to come.
3. Most importantly, be respectful. Act as if you live next door
to the people on the list and had to interact with them, face to
face, and on a daily basis. One of the truly disasterous aspects
of the net is that it allows us to avoid (and often encourages
disregarding) the fact that there is another person on the other end
of our transactions. That other person is quite likely to have
different ideas, beliefs, needs and desires, or goals. Make it
our shared responsibility to recognize those differences as the
aspects of what makes our community interesting.
Thank you,
bj
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 23 2005 - 15:42:32 PST