| Mailbase guidelines for List Members |
Aims
These are practical guidelines, rather than absolute rules, and they are meant to help you
use Mailbase lists in a way which will most benefit yourself and other people on the list.
Two really important guidelines:
Not all these guidelines work for all situations, so use your
discretion and remember:
The ‘subject:’ line in your message is there so that people can know what your message is about before they drop everything and read it. Try to make your subject descriptive and succinct. And remember that when you are replying to a message, the subject won't change unless you change it. So if the topic changes, you should change the subject line appropriately.
Please make sure that your messages are relevant to the list. They should also be brief and to the point.
If you send a reply to the list, your reply should contribute something to the discussion. Don’t send messages saying "I agree" or "right on" to the whole list. You should also restrain yourself from sending messages purely to point out other people’s errors in typing or spelling.
If you ask a question on the list, or send a questionnaire, you should send a summary of the responses to the list. This should be a true summary, not a concatenation of all the messages.
A flame is when you call someone names, are overtly rude, or are blatantly sarcastic or condescending. It looks immature and unprofessional. Anything worth saying can, and must, be stated in polite terms.
Remember that a large audience will see your messages, so be careful what you write. Also remember that people may keep a copy of your messages and your messages may also be archived at Mailbase. So your words could be stored for a very long time.
Copyrighted material is anything that anybody creates. When you create something, you own the exclusive right to copy it. Someone else's email, an article from an on-line periodical, material on a webpage, messages posted on a list, are all explicitly or implicitly copyrighted. So, broadly speaking, it could be a breach of copyright to forward email messages without the author’s permission.
However, common practice is that:
Please do not post private email to the list without the permission of the author of the message. It violates their copyright, and could expose you to civil and/or criminal liability. It’s also not nice.
When replying to a message, it is a good idea to quote part of the original message, so people reading your reply know the context. However, quoting the entire message is unnecessary, as everyone on the list will have received a copy of the original message. If your own contribution is smaller than what you're quoting, you're probably quoting too much.
Most email programs allow you to include the original message and then edit it, so you can delete all the irrelevant text.
Note: UK Copyright law allows quoting of short excerpts with proper reference to the author, and this also applies to messages sent to Mailbase lists.
Unsolicited commercial advertising is against the Janet Acceptable Use Policy (external link), which governs use of Mailbase. However, publicising items of potential interest to list members, such as new releases of software packages, publications, conferences etc. can be to the benefit of the list members.
If you have an advert which you feel would be of interest to members of a particular list, then you are advised to send the message to the list owner. If the message is suitable, the list owner will forward it to the list.
Mailbase lists may not be used to send junk-mail of any kind. This means unsolicited commercial email, chain letters, press releases, advertisements. Anyone who uses a Mailbase list for this purpose, no matter what the subject, can be banned from using Mailbase, and their mail administrator/ISP will be contacted.
Further information: Dealing with junk email
If the line-lengths in your messages are too wide, then they will be truncated or wrapped round to the next line and some people might have problems reading your message.
Try setting your window to less than 80 characters (72 is a common number), and use a fixed-width font like Courier. This will ensure that your messages can be read by everyone.
Keep your messages short. Anything over 100 lines counts as long and is unlikely to be read onscreen. Some people get email through commercial companies and are charged by the byte or by the second for connect time and bandwidth, so brevity can be important to them.
If you have a large text file it can be stored at Mailbase and interested list members can access it there.
Many people include a ‘signature’ at the bottom of email messages, which gives personal details such as name, email address and phone number.
Please use a short, well-designed signature, preferably four lines long at the most!
A signature which is longer than your message looks unprofessional and is likely to irritate other list members. And line art (pretty pictures composed of keyboard characters) will not display properly if someone is using a proportional font such as Times-Roman to display email messages.
Some email programs can send non-text files, such as a word-processed documents, or computer programs, via email. These are called attachments.
You shouldn’t normally send attachments to Mailbase lists, unless you are on a small closed list and you know that all the other members can cope with the attachment.
A lot of people will be unable to read them, either because their email program can’t decode them, or because they don’t have the right word processing software to read them after they have been decoded. You should also be aware that a lot of people receive email on a central computer, where storage space is limited, and an attached file can mean they run out of space and cannot receive any more email.
Instead of sending attachments, you could do one of the following:
Some email programs can send encoded messages, which are unreadable until decoded, and some can format your email as an HTML page. Please turn these options OFF before sending messages to Mailbase.
Cross posting is when you send the same message to more than one list. You should NEVER post to a large number of groups. Doing so will infuriate people who belong to more than one list and receive multiple copies of the message. It will also place unnecessary load on the Mailbase machine.
If you want to cross post you should:
Cross posting can be acceptable if you post to a small number of lists (four or five at the most) and the message is directly relevant to all the groups, but you shouldn’t use cross-posting as a quick method of blanket advertising.
If you do not wish to receive email while on holiday, please use the suspend command to temporarily halt email messages from Mailbase. You can look at the list archives to read any messages you may have missed while away.
If you use a vacation program to reply to your message while you are away, make sure it doesn't respond to messages from mailing lists.
Most Mailbase lists are set so replies to a message are directed to the sender, and not to everyone on the list. This is deliberate. Think hard before you send your reply to the whole list. Will your reply be of interest to everyone?
Some email programs will automatically carbon-copy your reply to the whole list as well as sending it to the original sender, so always check the message headers before sending.
Please don’t send Mailbase commands such as "unsubscribe" or "suspend" to your list, as other list members will not be interested.
These commands should be sent to the Mailbase computer program, whose email address is: mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk
If you’re having problems with Mailbase commands, please seek help.
If your email address changes, please make sure that our records are updated.
The Mailbase program uses your email address to identify you. If your address changes you will not be able to use Mailbase commands such as "leave" and "suspend" and you may have problems sending a message to the list.
Further information on how to change your address
If someone sends a message that seems to be in questionable taste or of dubious relevance to the list, please do NOT send a complaint or comment to the whole list. Contact the list owner instead.
And if junk mail or hate mail should ever be sent to the list, don’t reply and don’t send a message to the list. Contact the list owner or the Mailbase helpline, and that person will be removed.
Further information on dealing with junk mail