[SunHELP] Proposed new mailing list rules & guidelines

[Bill Bradford]

I'm throwing this out for your review before I make it official.  
Suggestions welcomed for changes/additions/improvements.  

This will be the standard list policy for the Geeks, Rescue,
and SunHELP mailing lists.

List Rules & Guidelines

********

* Be considerate of other list subscribers.  Flamewars, bigotry,
  intolerance, and racism will not be tolerated.

* Stay on topic: Please keep the subject of the post relevant to 
  the specific list its on (Sun hardware and Solaris/SPARC for the
  SunHELP list, "saving old computers" for the Rescue list.
  General off-topic/non-computer-related chatter should go on GEEKS).
  
  Discussions of illegal activities, software piracy, or how to 
  "bypass" copy protection and licensing schemes are not permitted.  

* Please post with the email address you're subscribed to.  If your
  posts to the list keep getting rejected, make sure that the address
  you subscribed under matches the one that you're posting from.  If
  they do not match, the posts will be automatically rejected by the              mailing list software.

* If you are going on vacation, unsubscribe from the list or temporarily
  set your mailing list options (via the URL above) to "no delivery".
  Nobody wants to read your "I am out of the office" auto-replies.  If            "vacation" messages get sent to the mailing list itself, you will be
  unsubscribed.

* Please post in plain ASCII text, no more than 72 characters per
  line.  This is because many subscribers read their mail with
  text-based mailers (mail(1), mutt, pine, emacs) and they find
  HTML-formatted messages or lines that stretch beyond 72 characters
  often unreadable.  MIME email will be converted to plain text (and
  any attachments removed) before delivery to the list.

* Do your homework before you post.  Do not send "easy" questions to
  the list that can be solved by looking at the available documentation:

  - Manual pages (see the "man" command)
  - Sun's on-line documentation repository at http://docs.sun.com
  - Solaris FAQs at http://www.sunhelp.org/faqs.php
  - Google's USENET archives at http://groups.google.com
  - Google itself, http://www.google.com
  - List archives search page, http://www.sunhelp.org/search.php

  If you do not get an answer to your question, do not keep sending 
  the same question over and over.  Do not send your homework, job
  interview, or test questions to the list expecting other people to
  do the work for you.

* Technical - if you post a question, please include relevant information
  iin your post:

  - What operating system are you running?  What hardware platform is it on?
  - If your question is about application software, what version?
  - Do you have any log file entries related to the problem?

  Make sure that any problems relating to application software (and not
  the hardware or OS itself) would not be better directed at any lists
  specifically geared towards that application (Apache, Postfix, etc).

* Include a useful Subject line.  Including a relevant Subject in the 
  message will ensure that more people actually read what you've 
  written. Also, avoid Subject lines with excessive capitalization.

* Trim your signature.  Keep the signature lines at the bottom of your 
  mail to a reasonable length.  Posts are rarely critical enough to 
  warrant a PGP signature, and those automatic address cards are merely 
  annoying.  

* Trim your replies: Only quote those parts of older emails that are
  relevant for your reply. Specifically, please refrain from adding your
  reply at the top of the message you're replying to. This will avoid
  situations where the N-th message in a thread has N copies of personal
  signatures and N copies of the list signature.

* Corporate email rules and disclaimers will be ridiculed based upon 
  their length and amount of legal jargon.  If your question contains
  information of a proprietary or confidential nature, DO NOT POST IT
  TO THE LIST.  All posts to the list are archived, and these archives
  are accessible to anyone on the Internet, as well as search engines 
  such as Google.  Do not email the list maintainer asking for posts 
  to be removed from the archives - if you don't want it available for
  anyone to see, you shouldn't have posted it in the first place.  

* COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING ON THESE MAILING LISTS IS NOT ALLOWED WITHOUT
  PRIOR PERMISSION FROM THE LIST MANAGER.

  Any sales people violating this rule (especially if you have
  subscribed to the list just to spam) will find themselves removed
  from the list, along with complaints submitted to their manager,
  the owner of the company they work for, and possibly their Internet             access provider.

  Personal for sale/for trade posts are allowed within reason.  If you
  have a large list of equipment to post (for example, getting rid of a
  collection, cleaning out the garage, or you're moving and don't want
  to haul it all), please contact Bill Bradford for approval first.

-- 
bill bradford
austin texas