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This document was originally authored by Josh Himmelsbach, later expanded
by bluestraveler.net, and most recently voted upon by the members of the
blackcat mailing list community. It is not meant to be preachy or
know-it-all, nor comprehensive and all-powerful. But especially for those
who are relatively new to our family, this might help them learn the
netiquette and save people some aggravation. If you have any questions,
please contact the administrator of the blackcat list at
blackcat-admin@nospam.theclerk.com (remove the "no spam" part before
mailing).
The following rules are are in place to protect the integrity of the
list and will be up for immediate suspension:
- Posting private messages publically and intentionally
- Impersonating another listmember (either by spoofing an address,
signing with someone else's name, etc.)
- Any attempt to undermine the actual workings of the list (hacking,
viruses, etc.)
- Offering to sell recordings, illegal software, etc.
The following item(s) that were voted upon by the members of the
blackcat mailing list are up for moderation and eventual suspension from
posting:
- Repeated flaming/trolling/baiting and/or contribution to such
discussion. This will be moderated with a with a three-step process. After
the first offense, the guilty party will receive a reminder of the
netiquette rules by email. After the second offense, they will receive a
notice stating if the problem persists, they will lose their posting
privileges. If it does happen a third time, the offending party will lose
their posting privileges for seven days.
The following items keep the list running smoothly:
- In general, remember that some people won't have the same setup as
you do, so their systems might not be able to handle things that yours
pays no attention to. So the fewer bells and whistles in a post, the
better.
- Try to avoid sending overly formatted messages (i.e. lots of web
links in them, underlined/boldface text, small/large fonts, etc). For
those with only text-based email, it causes lots of ugly garble which
makes it tough to read the actual content. For those with slow computers,
they usually take an annoyingly long time to open. If you are using an
email client that supports Rich Text or HTML [like Outlook], turn off this
encoding before posting to the list. In Outlook, you can do this by going
to the "Format" menu of the message and setting it to "Plain Text". For
information on more clients, see the excellent FAQ at etree.org.
- On the same note, do not send attachments to the list. They are
generally large-ish files which for some take a long time to download -
and remember some people are paying by the hour for net access. Also, some
email systems can't handle certain attachments and they show up as pages
and pages of garble at the end of a message, or worse, they crash some
people's email programs. If you have an attachment that might be of
general interest (like a cool BT picture) either have folks who want it
contact you individually to send it to them, or post it on a website
somewhere and give the URL to the list.
- Don't send chain mail / forwards / email "totems". They are generally
long and pointless, even if they are cute and/or funny, and are the
pinnacle of "No BTC". Besides, chances are a lot of people on the list,
will have gotten it already.
- No virus warnings unless verified personally. Unless you get a virus
warning directly from your IS group or person at work, do not forward it
to the list. 95% of these are hoaxes. For more information on determining
if a forward regarding a virus is true or not, visit the Virus
Information Library at McAfee.com or a similar
site.
Other things to remember:
- If you absolutely MUST post something not related to BT to the list,
do everyone a favor and put "No BTC" as part of your subject line. Some
people run filtering programs to automatically delete messages with this
in the subject line. For more information on filters, listmember Ed Blount
has assembled a filters primer (in doc format).
If you have something to add to this list, let us know! Excessive non-BT
posts may result in your posts being moderated.
- When responding to a post, try to remember to reply only to the list
address, so that multiple copies aren't being sent out to people. If
someone cross-posts messages [which shouldn't be done, as it generates
huge amounts of traffic], take care to respond only to the lists you're
on.
- When a thread gets long, you don't have to include every message in
the thread in your reply. Try to trim your quoted reply to only enough
material that people know what topic you are referring to, and
specifically what points you are addressing. It is quite tedious to scroll
down through three pages of quoted previous messages only to get to a
2-line comment at the bottom. Also, trimming replied quotes cuts down on
message size (thus download time -- see above). This is especially
applicable to subscribers in digest format.
- Read all the new messages before you start replying to them. Often
times one may have a point to make upon reading an email, and send it
along without realizing that someone else has already made that exact
point in a post one hasn't read yet.
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