EMAIL-ETIQUETTE

This list is for the dance community of Southern California at large, not necessarily just SCDC.

In that there is a certain undefinable quality to what constitutes the SCDC. That is -- any news of happenings of a dance nature will be gladly accepted on this list. There have been a lot of great art, music, and other events that have subscribers have been sending in, and we hope to get more in future..

Email list etiquette makes people want to stay and be part of the discussion conversation. There are a bunch of things we can all do to help that happen. These rules are not rules created by some authority, but rules that are common amongst all email lists because over the last two decades of email list usage on the net people have realized that this is 'what works' through trial and error. So please follow these guidelines - it'll make the experience much better for everyone here including yourself.

Getting on and off "the list" You can get (back) on the list by sending a blank email to the following address. Once you send the blank eMail, wait a few seconds, Topica will sent you a conformation email, you must reply to this to make it official. After that you can delete the whole mess. SCDC-subscribe@topica.com - to get on the SCDC Discussion list About getting off the list, do it yourself, its easy!   Digest mode conveniently delivers a full days worth of messages as one easy to read (or easy to toss!) message sent to you in the early AM. These commands are activated simply by sending any message (a blank one will do nicely) to the following addresses: SCDC-unsubscribe@topica.com - to get off the SCDC Discussion list SCDC-request-digest@topica.com - to change into digest mode SCDC-request-messages@topica.com - to change back to individual messages mode If you have an account at Topica, you can read posting archives on the web at: www.topica.com/lists/scdc/read

General Mail List Rules

Occasionally material will come across the list that doesn't interest you. Please be tolerant. It might interest someone else.

If you have anything personal to say to an individual list member that would not otherwise be of interest to the whole list, PLEASE send it to that individual by a private email.

Remember the internet etiquette rule that says that you must have permission to forward one person's e-mail message to someone else.

Try to remember to sign your mail so that folks know who you are. This list is an anonymous list. You may subscribe using any name and email address that you wish. If you do not post messages to the list, no other member will ever know that you are a subscriber. There are no commands that a member or non-member can send to the listserver to obtain the list of subscribers. Anyone on the discussion list can send to the discussion list, NO outsiders can. An outsider can ask an insider to forward the message. Remember anyone can join, you never know who might be reading your mail.

Please give some thought to your subject headings. dont start non list mail to selected individuals with the SCDC header in the subject line. it makes it hard to tell what is from the list, and what isnt, and if people are using filters in their netscape program to automaticly filter SCDC mail, your individual / personal message might just get filtered along with the rest of the more general messages.

No forwarding of SPAM, if you are not sure, then don't! No virus warnings, chain letters, petitions, forwarded sob stories and questionable humor, and all the other assorted urban myths circulating around the internet. We've probably all seen them many times. And deleted them many times. For sure includes anything that asks you to forward it to all your friends. SPAM: We don't eat it. We don't read it. You don't send it.

No message attachments, including images, !!!! If you want to offer an attachment, tell everyone about it and ask them to request it from you privately, then send it to them privately. Not everyone has e-mail software that handles attachments very well. Alternatively, you can send it as part of the message.

No HTML coding. Please do not send e-mail using HTML coding. Not everyone has the latest software with the latest "bells and whistles." HTML coding is very difficult for older software to handle. A page on how to turn this off is at: www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/listowners/html-off.htm

Never set up an Auto Responder unless you unsubscribe from the list first. The penalty for failing to do this properly is public humiliation followed by death.

Don't blatantly advertise a product or service that you sell or market, particularly if it has nothing to do with dance or SCDC. However, do alert fellow list members about books, products, services, websites, other mailing lists, events, etc. that would be of interest.

List Demeanor Look - we're all here to have a good time. Anger and frustration don't lead to a good time. So leave it at home. The standard golden rule is: be nice to each other. If you have fun having flame-wars, do it someplace else. Think before you hit send. Email is a tricky medium. For example, sarcasm is a pretty typical thing in common conversation, but something that rarely comes across in email. Why? because you can't hear voice inflection or see facial expressions. So often something said in jest will come across otherwise. But this group is a pretty friendly and nice group. A good rule of thumb here is to assume everything written here is said with a smile. If something sounds bad to you, re-read it. You probably mis-interpreted. If after a few readings you can't put it in a good light... write the person OFF-LIST to ask. They probably didn't mean to insult or hurt or whatever, and they deserve the chance to clarify. In general - if you have a conflict with someone - KEEP IT OFF LIST. We don't want to get involved. The other people on the list do not need to be part of your conflict. We want to construct a creative, supportive, friendly environment. And what we ALL do is a part of that.

Quoting Messages Quoting is an EXTREMELY useful tool when used properly. The purpose of quoting is to give the reader some clue as to what you are responding to. But used badly it's worse than useless - it wastes so much space and time that people begin to ignore your writing because it's hard to read. So there are a few standard rules of quoting that help - PLEASE attempt to follow them. Quoting in email is traditionally done with a '>' character in the front of the line that is quoted, and the '>' characters stack up with each successive quote (so something preceded by '>>' usually came from two messages back in the thread). The exact quote character really doesn't matter. What matters is that there is some easy way to tell what text is new and what text is quoted. Most email programs will do this automatically for you. It helps a great deal to see who said the quote. So when you can, proceed the quote with something like: ' said:' Rules for quoting. - DO quote. It makes reading easier - Quote as much as is needed to remind people what you are responding to. - Quote NO MORE than is needed to remind people what you are responding to. Remember - we're all on the list so we've all already read the original message. - Edit out headers, footers, etc. Quotes are intended as simply a reminder. Quoting entire messages is worse than a waste of space, it makes your messages LESS readable. Only quote a few lines - just barely enough for people to understand your response. Remember - we've all read the message before - we simply need a reminder. PLEASE take the time to edit the useless stuff out of quotes. It is only a couple of seconds for you, but multiply that number of seconds by the number of people reading your resulting message and you can see that it's the only courteous thing to do. If you have a long passage, use editors marks ( ... means there was useless stuff in the middle removed.). If you can condense a paragraph down to a couple words of paraphrase, do so with [] marks. For example [re: the quoting rules] indicates the subject you are responding to without actually quoting the whole damn thing.

go back to ONLINE COMMUNITY.