David Boots said:
>Suggested guidelines for posting to PD List:
Firstly, I would add two important guidelines concerning subjects. These
are mainly to keep subject lines relevant to the actual body of your
message so we can archive and abstract the list archives:
- One topic, one message. If you have many points to make, send them in
individual posts. When people respond, their comments will be neatly
organised under yours.
- Change/don't change the subject as appropriate. Don't change the subject if
you are replying to someone else's message, otherwise no one will be able
to find it. But do change it if you are genuinely starting another thread.
Not only does this make reading the list much easier, it also makes useful
archiving possible.
Personally I cope with my mail by sorting it by subject and then decide to
read or delete bunches of messages depending on the subject and/or what the
other messages in that thread were like.
If you find the list messages are getting mixed up with your other mail,
then I suggest you find a mail reader which does "filtering" - I get the
mail from my different mailing lists sorted into different mailboxes, which
works very well. There are a number of POP mail readers that do filtering,
Eudora and Claris EMailer spring to mind - I don't know about AOL and stuff
though.
Aother formatting thing: please put a blank line inbetween paragraphs. I
just can't read documents where the paragraphs are all merged.
>3) If your name appears daily, ask yourself "why?". If you are one of the
>8-10 people whose names appear almost EVERY day, try and sit back and let
>others on the list who may have information to share a chance to tell their
>stories.
I don't think this is fair. Some people genuinely have more to add than others.
As far as "Should I post this?" goes, I always use the ancient (probably
Chinese) saying "Only speak if you can improve on silence".
>4) It is not important that the List-members see "thank you" notes or
>requests for copies of information (PD or otherwise). Writing to someone
>directly means less mail for the remaining members to have to delete.
This is indeed true.
>6) If you feel capable of posting new messages with subject names, try
>copying the e-mail addresses of those people who you'd like to "chat with"
>off-line and write to them directly. (Repeated posts to this list by other
>members seem to indicate this is an important request).
Hmmm. I'd rather err on the side of sending stuff to the list at the risk
of sending something inappropriate, rather than keep a potential nugget
private. But then again, I have a decent mail reader and can cope with the
traffic.
>7) If you feel that certain individuals are choosing to ignore this type of
>guidelines, write to them directly and state your views so that they will
>understand that their type of posting is not welcome on this list.
Ouch. Who are we as individuals to judge what is appropriate for this
forum? Sure, it is a Parkinson's Disease forum, but how do you strictly
define what is PD related?
Personally I would like to see a number of lists, covering:
- Announce
- Drugs & technical stuff about them
- Surgery
- Other treatments
- Coping
- Humour
- Welfare
- Gadgets
And so on. You could join which lists you wanted - I personally have no
interest any more in drug treatments.
Splitting the lists would also make it easier to get the lists hosted by
people for free - a much smaller commitment.
However much I think this is a good idea however, no one else does - and
you can't do something like this without the backing of the majority. So
I'll just mention it every now and then until the idea catches on :-)
I do think that mail-bombing people is unacceptable, even if they did post
something you think is inappropriate. Who are you to judge? The only person
who could ever have the moral right to censor someone would be the
listowner, (hi Barb :-) who could remove the user from the list. But this
is a huge and difficult step to take, and 'd hate for her to be put in that
position.
>I hope that all of you will find these guidelines helpful in posting new
>info or responding to others. The focus of this list has certainly been
>diverted in the past and should remain on PD and not be a copied-format of
>other bulletin boards.
No, the nature of the community is changing. You would see the same thing
happen if we were a physical group of people who got together - you start
off restricting your conversation to the strict subject domain, but after a
while you want to express yourselves in other ways. You cannot divorce the
disease from the person. We are getting to know each other, that's all.
If you've got to the end of this (you patient person :-), please don't
forget the two items about subjects - its very important.
If you want a pd-chat list, let me know.
Simon
--------- My opinions are my own, NIP's opinions are theirs ----------
Simon J. Coles Email: [log in to unmask]
New Information Paradigms Work Phone: +44 1344 778783
http://www.nipltd.com/ Work Fax: +44 1344 772510
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