[prog] [FAQ] LinuxChix List Policy FAQ

Sun Oct 20 18:01:08 EST 2002

LinuxChix: List Policy FAQ

Mary Gardiner

Jennifer Vesperman

Revision History                                                               
Revision 1.3                          October 2002                             
Significantly updated section about forwarding messages off-list, added a      
question about list disputes and archiving, divided into sections.             
Revision 1.2                          September 2002                           
Added Reply-To question                                                        
Revision 1.1.1                        July 10 2002                             
Added question about non-English lists                                         
Revision 1.1                          May 19 2002                              
Added question about copyright material                                        
Revision 1.0                          January 29 2002                          

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1. Membership Policies

    1.1. What are LinuxChix lists for?
    1.2. Who are LinuxChix lists for?
    1.3. Are men welcome too?
    1.4. Is LinuxChix English-only?

2. List Policies

    2.1. Are there any rules?
    2.2. Are there any other policies?
    2.3. Why doesn't the reply-to point to the list?

3. List Etiquette

    3.1. I found this very interesting article about Free Software/women/
        technology/politics that I think everyone should read and discuss! Can
        I forward it?
    3.2. Can I forward LinuxChix posts to people who are not subscribed to
        LinuxChix?
    3.3. I notice that many of the lists are privately archived or have no
        archives available. Can I put up my own archive?

4. List Complaints and Disputes

    4.1. I have a complaint about a message posted to a LinuxChix list. What
        should I do?

The latest version of this FAQ can be found at http://www.linuxchix.org/content
/docs/faqs/policy.html

Discussion of this FAQ is welcome on the <issues at linuxchix.org> list.

This FAQ is posted once every three months to every public LinuxChix list.

1. Membership Policies

1.1. What are LinuxChix lists for?

LinuxChix lists are designed to be helpful, friendly, female-oriented lists for
women interested in Linux. There are lists for technical questions, discussion
of women and technology, learning about Linux, and social chat.

1.2. Who are LinuxChix lists for?

LinuxChix lists are lists for women interested in Linux.

1.3. Are men welcome too?

Men are welcome on most LinuxChix lists, provided that they realise and respect
that the lists are primarily intended as lists for women.

At present, there is one exception - the grrls-only at linuxchix.org mailing list,
which is female-only.

1.4. Is LinuxChix English-only?

At present, all LinuxChix posts are in the English language. This is more due
to the coordinators of LinuxChix living in English speaking countries than
anything else.

If anyone wants to volunteer to run LinuxChix lists in other languages, they
might want to ask on some of the lists if there are many other Chix who would
be interested in a list in their language and if so, join the 
volunteers at linuxchix.org list and volunteer to run it.

Alternatively, they could start a language-based chapter, and run a mailing
list on a separate server. In this case they should join the 
chapters at linuxchix.org list.

2. List Policies

2.1. Are there any rules?

There are two:

  * Be polite

  * Be helpful

LinuxChix was founded in part due to the aggressiveness of existing technical
lists. If you do tell someone to read the manual, which is sometimes the most
useful answer to a technical question, do it politely and at least tell them
where to find the manual, and invite them to come back with any questions that
the manual doesn't answer for them.

There is no prior knowledge required to post to any LinuxChix technical list.
Questions at any level are equally welcome, and should be treated as such.

2.2. Are there any other policies?

LinuxChix lists are hosted by volunteers. Please be nice to them and don't send
large mails that will overload their machine. All binary attachments, and mails
over 20Kb in size will be rejected. Post a link to any information larger than
this, or invite people to email you privately to get you to send them a copy.

All posts to LinuxChix lists should be in plain text, rather than HTML. Not all
LinuxChix can read mail in HTML format. It can also be very hard on LinuxChix
who receive mail in digest form (all messages for the day bundled into one
mail).

2.3. Why doesn't the reply-to point to the list?

There are two articles on the topic of altering a mailing list's 'Reply-To'
header so that using the 'reply' option in the mail client makes mail go just
to the list. I recommend that you read both of them. They are Reply-To Munging
Considered Harmful and Reply-To Munging Considered Useful. I also have a couple
of considerations that aren't explicitly stated in either article.

If I don't change the reply-to, I respect the choice of people who have
explicitly set it in their mail client. If I have a technical way of telling
who has and who hasn't set it in their client, and only change the ones that
haven't set it, then using 'reply' would be a mix of 'to the sender' and 'to
the mailing list', and that would be confusing.

Mail clients have been producing a 'reply-to-list' option. This is, in my
opinion, the best technical solution.

Some mailing list software (including Mailman) now includes an option to avoid
mailing a recipient if the recipient is also cc'd in a message. This minimises
duplicate messages, and is a technical solution for one of the biggest issues.

Discussion of new, additional points on the subject is on-topic for most
LinuxChix lists. Discussion of the existing points in relation to LinuxChix
lists is welcome on the open-topic mailing lists, but not specific-topic lists.
(It's on-topic for technical lists if you're asking about it for -your- lists.)

A personal note: Please accept that discussing the known points with me will
not make me change my mind about how the LinuxChix lists are set up. New points
might, but not the ones I've already thought through. Thank you. Jenn.

3. List Etiquette

3.1. I found this very interesting article about Free Software/women/technology
/politics that I think everyone should read and discuss! Can I forward it?

Please do not post material to the lists that was not written by you, including
articles and forwarded material, unless you are certain that the copyright
owner of the material allows redistribution. Otherwise you are violating the
owner's copyright. If you come across an interesting article that you want to
discuss, you should post a link to the article and a summary of the parts you
found interesting. If it is not available online, the only thing you can do is
post a detailed description of how to find it (author, title, journal/newspaper
/book title, publisher and so on).

3.2. Can I forward LinuxChix posts to people who are not subscribed to
LinuxChix?

No. Not without the author's permission. Assume you do not have such permission
if you are uncertain.

There are several reasons, both legal and ethical, why this is so.

The copyright of any message sent to LinuxChix lists is owned by the author of
the message, and is only free for redistribution if the copyright owner
specifically allows it. You therefore mustn't forward LinuxChix messages off
the LinuxChix lists without specific permission from the author. If they didn't
give such permission in the body of their message, you could mail them and ask
for it, but please respect their decision either way.

Members make posts to LinuxChix on the understanding that they will not be
redistributed offlist. Some members make personal posts trusting in this
understanding. LinuxChix has successful mailing lists that discusses sensitive
topics and these can only function based on this understanding. Members
forwarding posts offlist therefore breach this understanding with the author
and with LinuxChix, hurting both the author of the message and the function of
many of the LinuxChix lists as a whole.

If the message was posted to list publically archived on LinuxChix (some of the
technical lists are publically archived), you could give other people a link to
the archived copy of their post.

Generally, as in all email, when you reply to the mail it is accepted that you
can quote relevant parts of the message you are replying to in your message.
You should keep this to a minimum, mainly for bandwidth reasons. And everyone
is subscribed, so we all saw the previous message.

3.3. I notice that many of the lists are privately archived or have no archives
available. Can I put up my own archive?

Absolutely not. Any lists not publically archived are not archived for a
reason. These reasons include letting people have sensitive personal
discussions without making them available for searching and reading for years
to come. You must not archive our lists or otherwise republish them.

4. List Complaints and Disputes

4.1. I have a complaint about a message posted to a LinuxChix list. What should
I do?

In general, LinuxChix lists welcome differing opinions. If your complaint falls
within the basic 'be polite, be helpful' guidelines (which includes being
polite and helpful to the author), by all means, discuss your problem on any
list for which it is on-topic.

As a guideline, politely arguing with a post is fine, attacking the poster
themself is not.

Any problems you have with any material posted to the LinuxChix that can't be
addressed in a polite and helpful way on-list, for example because it concerns
issues you would rather not discuss on list, or because personal attacks,
privacy issues, third parties, or legal issues such as defamation are involved
should be raised with the list administrators or the LinuxChix coordinator. The
list administrators can be contacted at LISTNAME-admin at linuxchix.org. The
co-ordinator is currently Jenn Vesperman, who can be reached at <
jenn at linuxchix.org>.