Cohousing-L Mailing List: COHOUSING-L POSTING GUIDELINES - PLEASE READ

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

>From Fred H. Olson  sysop of Cohousing-L:

Hi,

Like many mailing lists Cohousing-L generates a lot of messages that
fill subscribers mail boxes.  Keeping the number of extraneous messages
is a high priority.

It seems to me that recently there has been an increase in the number of
inappropriate messages posted to Cohousing-L.  

NOTE: This message is not intended to be a criticism of any particular 
poster so relax.   (But watch it the future :) (BTW, I occasionlly
post something inappropriate by mistake -- sorry about that.)

Two particular types of inappropriate messages on Cohousing-L recently:

1) messages that would more approrpriately be sent directly by personal
email to one person.  Or responses to these! If you have a question for a 
particular person and the reply would not be of general interest,
please send email to the person directly.

2) brief, trivial responses usually only serve to clutter up the list.
Please avoid.

Below are two guidelines borrowed from another list's policies that
I'd also encourage here.  (From Shahrukh Merchant
merchant [at] anuxv.att.com , sysop of the ballroom list):

3. ETIQUETTE WHEN ASKING QUESTIONS:  Request that answers be sent directly
   to you, and offer to post summaries of responses.

   Questions are fine--the access to a large number of people who might
   answer them (though not necessarily consistenly :-)) is one of the
   biggest assets we have in the list.  However, they also have the
   potential for generating a lot of list traffic with bits and pieces of
   answers.  A good way to "get the best of both worlds," and also for
   those who ask for the information and presumably benefit from it to
   "return the favour" to the list, is to offer to post a summary or
   compilation of the information back to the list.  E.g.,

        "Where can I go ballroom dancing in Albuquerque, New Mexico?
        Please send e-mail responses directly to me, and I will post
        a summary of responses back to the list, combined with my own
        observations and experiences when I return.  I have checked the
        Dancers' Archive, but couldn't find what I wanted--I will also
        add the new information to the Dancers' Archive file and send
        the update to Eileen."  [Now *there's* a socially reponsible
        posting!]

   Not only does this reduce piecemeal traffic, but your compilation may
   make an excellent article for inclusion in the Dancers' Archives, or FAQ,
   or even so that other interested people can store all the pertinent
   information in one mail message.

4. AVOID TRIVIA:  Please refrain from trivial responses (usually
   characterized by being 1-2 lines long).

   This is not to encourage you to be verbose if you can make a point
   concisely, but most 1-2 line responses of late have seemed rather
   trivial.  When one is asking several hundred people to go through
   your message (and the dozens of lines of quoted material that
   typically accompanies these trivial messages), would it
   not behoove one to put at least a little thought into the content?
   Examples of trivial messages (unless accompanied by some further
   elaboration):  "Me [sic] too!"  "I'm not sure if I would agree with
   that."  "Ha, Ha!"  "I was wondering that too."
        These are probably appropriate if sent *just* to the original
   poster, but it really does little more than clutter up mailboxes if
   sent to the whole list.  (Many _questions_ ARE 1-2 lines long and
   appropriately so--this guideline is not intended to apply to
   questions.)

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson   fholson [at] uci.com   (612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM
1221 Russell Av N, Minneapolis,MN 55411 Sysop of COHOUSING-L listserv;
COHOUSING URL's:  mailto://listserv [at] uci.com (w/ msg: Info Cohousing-L)
gopher://gopher.uci.com/     TC FREENET PUBLIC TEST PHASE: May 1, 1995 
URL's: mailto://info [at] freenet.msp.mn.us  http://freenet.msp.mn.us:8000/