Welcome to the Technol-Chat e-mail forum; part of the British Techno Chat Dot Net Technology Discussion Network

This is the primary policy document which lays down some guidelines for list participation. You may wish to retain its contents for your future reference; please read it CAREFULLY before posting to the list. When you join the Techno-Chat E-Mail forum, you were sent a copy of this document automatically. It may also be updated from time to time; so you may wish to review it periodically if you remain a member of what we hope with grow into a thriving community of technology enthusiasm. In case your browser has this web page cached, you can always find the most current version of this document by clicking on this URL

The focus of this group in on technology; old and new. It doesn't have to be computer-related, although much of it is so. Neither is this just a group for the visually impaired, or even the disabled. We strongly encourage main stream integration.

There aren't many rules which you must observe in this forum. But those few rules which do exist will be strictly implemented.

List Rules

You may not

1. You May Not use this forum to make offensive or defamatory remarks, accusations or insinuations, directly or via innuendo, towards any other individual, regardless of whether they are associated with the Techno-Chat Network, of which this forum is a part. Membership of this forum shall be deemed as association with the Techno-Chat network
2. You May Not use this forum to send file attachments of any kind. Any such attempts will be blocked by the server, and brought to the attention of the list owners and the assistant list controller; who will take the appropriate action.
3. You May Not use fowl, obscene or abusive language under any circumstances whatsoever. This will not be tolerated and breech of this condition repetitively will result in moderation of your post and, ultimately, expultion from the group
4. You May Not cross-post between this and other external E-Mail groups whose content is similar to Techno-Chat
A "Cross-Post" is, technically, a message whose "To:" header includes multiple, (or implicit) destinations. However, in the context of this anbd all of our groups, a "Cross-Post" equals a message which appears on multiple E-Mail lists within a short space of tie. The reason for this stipulation is simple; we are very well aware that many group members will also be members of other groups, internal and external. We don't believe it is fair to force people to download the same content repeatedly.

Many of our members are using capped monthly data tariffs and this is wasteful. We've lost subscribers before now for this reason; and we can totally understand why. So, the practice of repeat sending shall also be covered by this policy as unsolicited.

Note: there are a few exceptional circumstances where cross-posting may be appropriate:

1. You have communicated directly with the list owners in advance, and been given approval for your post
2. You are promoting an upcoming event which has a direct significance to the function of this group; in other words, technology
3. Your intention is to generate fresh interest in the Techno-Chatgroup in particular and, subsequently, the Techno Chat Dot Net project as a whole; in which case, please accept our thanks
4. The Techno-Chat group must be the point of origin of your message, and reference to the group must be made at the head of the message
5. You May Not use inappropriate subject lines in your messages; this stipulation will be covered in greater detail later in this document, as it requires further clarification

A few things to keep in mind

1. When quoting text from a previous message in a thread, please only quote what is relevant. In other words, please do not quote an entire chain of messages, only the most recent one to which you are replying. Note: there is a 30K size restriction on messages posted to the group. This includes all headers. We are constantly reviewing this limit and may adjust it as necessary as time goes by
2. Please do not forward messages from other lists with similar content to this one. It is highly likely that other list members will already have seen the content you are sharing elsewhere as we are well aware that many members are also members of other external groups. If you wish to quote text from such messages, that's fine, but please remove all message headers, and be selective with what you quote. That will help reduce extraneous traffic. Be mindful at all times that some group members use capped Internet tariffs. Please see above for exceptions to this
3. If an article you wish to forward is copyright material or the intellectual property of other individuals or entities, please respect the copyrights or intellectual property ownership of the individual or entity concerned, and seek their permission before forwarding to this group. Where possible, please forward links to articles, rather than the full articles themselves. That gives fellow-members the option of whether or not to download the material
4. If you wish to forward messages which are posted to this forum by other members to external groups, we would advise seeking the permission of the original author before doing so. We consider it the height of discourtesy to simply forward without first requesting such consent; and if the list owners receive complaints from other members regarding such behaviour, the appropriate action will be taken. Hopefully, any such issues can be resolved amicably, and further action will only be taken in extreme cases
5. The list owners reserve the exclusive right to remove any member from the group, place any member into moderated mode, or suspend their membership where it is deemed necessary and appropriate to do so. Any decision made regarding the list, its membership or content by the list owners shall be considered final and binding. We would, of course, only consider removal under extreme circumstances. We're not running a dictatorship here; and we hope that all members are adult enough to behave in a civilised manner. As stated above, all decisions taken by the list owners shall be considered final and binding
6. Please do not attempt to CC (carbon copy) messages intended for other groups to Techno-Chat, or visa versa. Implicit destinations are often used as a method of distributing malicious or potentially harmful E-Mail and Techno-Chat is protected from implicit destinations. Repeated behaviour by any member shall be defined hereby as unacceptable behaviour and all such messages will be rejected by the list server without notice or consultation. As above, messages which contain multiple destinations in the "To:" field will not be accepted on list. For reasons explained earlier, this, too, is a typical ploy used by those intent on spam and, as such, we have to protect the group for its mutual benefit. This is not a personal issue; nor do we expect people to remember this at all times. It is very easy to overlook things like this, and we mention it here so that you're aware of the reasons if your mail begins bouncing when you use these bulk mail tactics

Subject Lines

This is one issue which often creates confusion, and is often not helped by forgetfulness when posting messages. We're all guilty of that at times; we've all been there, done this. But the time has come now for us to start enforcing proper use of subject lines; so please read the below carefully.

Your subject lines should be relevant to the topic of your message, or to the message to which you are replying. In other words, if the original topic of the message thread changes from something like "My New Electric Toaster", then you start discussing your new electric kettle, the responsibility is yours as the new sender to change the subject line. This is simply an issue of user initiative; but it's something which we will enforce if need be. Please don't say "nobody told me", it's here, in black and white! You may think that this is churlish; but consider. The list archives can contain hundreds of messages in each monthly volume. Trying to carry out a search based on a specific subject is far easier if, as we propose, the subject lines are relevant. It's far more likely that something will be missed if otherwise and that "something missed" may be precisely the content that the user is looking for. If, after reading the above, you require still further explanation, please contact the list owners or our assistant list controller.

Summary

If you can live with these few rules, then welcome to the Techno-Chat E-Mail forum. Should you have any questions or comments related to this group, or any concerns regarding the content of this document, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss them with you. You can find a list of all of our E-Mail groups here.

This document is Copyright <©> Mac Access Dot Net; The British Mac Accessibility Network & Techno Chat Dot Net, the British technology discussion network. It was last updated on Wednesday, 5 October 2011, at 14:25 (UTC).