SpaceArt.org Space & Astronomical Artists Listserver Guidelines
and Terms of Service
Cut-To-The-Chase Version
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SpaceArt.org Space & Astronomical Artists Listserver Guidelines and Terms of Service Cut-To-The-Chase Version |
 | This forum is a professional communications channel. Like conduct is expected, encouraged and appreciated. Please remember that there are many members from many disciplines, not solely artists, reading the thoughts that you send to the List. Publishers, collectors and entusiasts are also members of this forum. Please compose your messages accordingly. The sections below outline the conventions of the List community. We ask that you please take the time to read and observe these guidelines. We have lost valuable members due to the volume of mail. Many members subscribe to more than one Listserve and read Usenet News as well during the course of their day. Please respect their workloads by keeping your messages concise by following these guidelines. In short, if you craft your posts with as much care as you give your paintings, all will benefit. Thank you. | |||||||
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Conduct:
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Offensive language, flame wars, off-topic posts unrelated to this forum and generally inappropriate or unprofessional conduct will not be tolerated. Participants in these threads will be asked to move the discussion to a private channel or public newsgroup that is more appropriate to the topic. If warnings go unheeded, or if conditions otherwise warrant, said subscribers' posts will be moderated and/or they will be removed from the list. In severe instances the List will revert to full moderation status, thereby allowing for the free flow of pertinent topics until such time that integrity and order has been restored. Please remember that participation in a mailing list is a privilege, not a right. At the discretion of the List owner and facilitators, any member may be dropped from the List at any time for any reason. This List does not run as a democracy. There is no free speech. There is no appeal. We trust that there will never be any reason to enforce this.
Security:
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Closed List: Only subscribed members are allowed to post to the list. This prevents spamming and external directed virus and Denial of Service attacks. Spoofing of a member's address is of course possible but unlikely. | Viruses & Worms: As things become more complex, nefarious characters begin using the complexity to do bad stuff with it. Due to increased threats of attacks distributed via eMail, many times unknown to the sender, the List is closed to:
HTML and/or Styled Text Formatted Messages: eMail is intended as a text-based protocol. The inclusion of the ability to execute and display eMail as if it were a Web page opens the door for others to run malicious software on your computer without your permission or knowledge - until it's too late. This type of message going to a List allows executable virus code to be transmitted to all subscribers and puts them at risk. To make sure your messages will get through unimpeded, please locate in your mail reader the preferences related to composition of messages and set them to "Plain Text Only" composition and turning off:
Posting:
| To post a message to all List members, send eMail to: spaceart-talk@spaceart.org | Subject lines are auto-prepended by the server with "[SpaceArt]" for easy identification and auto-filtering when they arrive. Replies are auto-prepended with "Re: [SpaceArt]" There is no need to add the "Re:"
Re: [whatever] (as in "Re:" = "regarding"—"Re:" stands for "Reply")
If this happens, the server will incorrectly modify the subject:
Replies to these then become:
Replying: |
Do's:
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Each to Its Own or Just Because Something May be Possible is Not a Compelling Reason to Do It.: All subscribers are encouraged to use the technologies of the Internet, each to their specific design and strength. Usenet, Listserves and eMail are intended for short, plain-text messages; the Web for formatted text combined with images, animation and sound. Doing one within the other is unnecessary, unreliable and, in some cases, detrimental or disastrous. People have fallen into the habit of sending HTML eMail (because they think it's cool) thinking that there's no difference except the way it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it isn't either plain-text or HTML; it's both. HTML eMail more than doubles the size of the message to deliver the exact same content because it does it twice; once in plain-text and once with the formatting tags added around and throughout the second, redundant part to make it display as if it were a Web page. That's what the Web and Web browsers are for. Additionally, HTML eMail has become a big indicator of spam. Spammers have adopted it because it's flashy. It also makes it possible to place ordinary-looking text (or jibberish designed to fool spam filters) into the plain-text portion and the real message that they want to sell or scam you with into the HTML portion.
People have also fallen into the habit of attaching megabytes of files to what is really intended to be a simple letter.
Change the Subject: Often, a thread will start in one place and evolve into another. If you are replying to a message and are changing the subject, or notice that it has changed sufficiently over time, please edit the subject in the form: Reformat Your Inclusions: Please respect your fellow members. Take the time to reformat a portion of a Web page that you found and want to quote in your message so that a hundred others don't have to do it for you, just so they can read it. Your efforts will be appreciated. Copying and pasting Web page text often results in messages that look thus:
The film is a slam-dunk," he said. "Dinosaurs are one of the
things kids care most about, along with bugs.
A lot of people are
also going to come just to see what $130
million of animation can
buy."
Disney has clearly also spent big on the
Dinosaur website. It
features the movie soundtrack playing
continuously, plenty of flash
animation for viewing dinosaurs from every
conceivable angle, "dino
cards" that kids can send to their friends
and, of course, the movie
trailer.
As you can see, they are hard to read and show disrespect for your readers.
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Dont's: (These are not up for discussion.)
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Top-Posting: Top-posting is the rude habit of replying to messages with your text at the top and that which you are replying to following. Too much trouble to trim the previous included message down to only the pertinent section and then follow it with one's reply, so just hit "Reply", start typing at the top, hit "Send" and get on with your day. Essentially, this is lazy and disrespecful to everyone on the Listserve. Your message is out of sequence to that which you are responding and people must skip over it to learn what you are replying to then go back up to read your reply; sometimes repeating this process if they need further clarification. Doing this, you are essentially saying that your time is more important than all of the other members' time combined. In normal conversations, one does not answer to something that has not yet been said; nor do they repeat what has been said after responding to it, so it is unclear to reply at the top, whilst the original message is at the bottom. Secondly: In western society a book is normally read from top to bottom.
Top-posting became "popular" when the masses started using Internet and particularly eMail. Ordinary, clueless people quote all the article, or quote the article below their own posting/mail because it requires less time, because they haven't thought much of the purpose of quoting, and because their software are optimized for such use. As the growth of "ordinary" users using Internet has been far greater than the speed of public "education", top-posting has, unfortunately, become a false de-facto standard in eMails and mailing lists, as well as in some non-technical newsgroups.
Finally, top-posting is simply a custom, like wearing neckties or eating with one's right or left hand, that identifies one's membership in a particular community. This self-identification function probably serves as much as any other factor to reinforce its use: one may be denied help in comp.lang.c++ if one self-identifies as a "barbarian" by top-posting. In this way, not top-posting is similar to other customs employed by other communities: the Unix community, the various programmer cultures; the "New Jersey/Bell Labs", the "MIT/Cambridge" or the "West Coast/Berkeley" communities and, surprisingly enough, the AOL community. Top-posters generally list the following reasons to support their view. Each is followed by cogent answers:
A: Scrolling down to find the fresh material is generally only a problem if the quoted text has not been appropriately trimmed.
A: This is only relevant in a legal, financial or customer support type of environment, where evidence through a paper trail is necessary but may be superfluous to the new message content itself. This forum is none of these.
Mostly, though, Top-posting is unacceptable because it soon leads to the next lazy item:
Excessive Quoting: Please limit the amount of a message you include (quote) in a reply. Please retain ONLY sections that are specifically relevant to your response and trim those to a minimum. This is just common courtesy and common sense. There is simply no need to re-send a 46 line message to all List members, simply to reply with a one-liner or say "I agree" or "Me too". Excessive Signatures: The Internet convention is two to four lines. In these "modern" times, with faster, higher bandwidth technologies in use, longer sigs do proliferate and some leeway is allowed, as the bandwidth isn't as much of an issue for a single message as it used to be in the "old days". They do add up, however, and become an aggregate bandwidth issue all over again if hundreds of thousands of people begin adopting excessive sigs. That notwithstanding, the signal to noise ratio for an individual receiving a message with a 7+ line sig, especially with a one-liner as the entire message, is still just as high as it ever was. Please keep yours lean. Test Messages: Test messages are fine, but if you see a message come through, the subject reading: "Test", "Anyone seeing this?", "Is the server broken?" or words to that effect, please do not respond to it. By the time you read the message, the author will have already received one from the server and already knows that it got through. If, on the other hand, they didn't receive a message from the server, yours won't get to them either.
Virus Alerts: Most of the virus warning messages that are circulating are hoaxes and are in effect viruses themselves, taking up our time, money, bandwidth and disk space. Forwarding any warning eMail that you receive without first checking on its validity, no matter how certain you are that it comes from a "person not given to hysteria" is irresponsible.
Thank You.
Your use of the Listserve is predicated upon your agreement to and continued observance of these Terms of Service. If, at any time, the List Administrator feels that the ToS is not being followed, a warning will be given—perhaps privately, perhaps to the List at large, depending upon the circumstance. If warnings go unheeded by individual members, their address will be added to a Moderated Address Pool and their posts will be approved on an individual basis until the situation has shown to have been remedied. If the situation in question goes further ignored, the person will be unsubscribed. Access your Account Maintenance Screen by pressing: I Agree. SpaceArt Listservers hosted, maintained and moderated by: B.E.Johnson - FIAAA | ||||||||
