[Techtalk] [FAQ] LinuxChix List Policy FAQ

[LinuxChix FAQs]

LinuxChix: List Policy FAQ

Mary Gardiner

Revision History                                                               
Revision 1.0                       January 29 2002                             
Revision 1.1                       May 19 2002                                 
Added question about copyright material                                        

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. List Policies
   
    1.1. What are LinuxChix lists for?
    1.2. Who are LinuxChix lists for?
    1.3. Are men welcome too?
    1.4. Are there any rules?
    1.5. I found this very interesting article about Free Software/women/
        technology/politics that I think everyone should read and discuss! Can
        I forward it?
    1.6. Someone just posted something smart and useful to a LinuxChix list!
        Can I forward it elsewhere?
    1.7. Are there any other policies?
   
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. List 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. 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.

1.5. 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).

1.6. Someone just posted something smart and useful to a LinuxChix list! Can I
forward it elsewhere?

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 shouldn't forward LinuxChix messages off
the LinuxChix 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.

If it was posted to a publically archived list (only techtalk is publically
archived at present), you could give other people a link to the archived copy
of their post.

Generally, as in all email, 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.

1.7. Are there any other policies?

It is strongly recommended that all subscribers to any LinuxChix list also
subscribe to the announce at linuxchix.org mailing list. It is very low traffic
and all messages relevant to the entire community will be posted there.

If anyone has a message for the entire community, such as changes to LinuxChix
as a whole, or announcements of new lists or chapters, they are asked to post
them to announce at linuxchix.org and not crosspost them to any other lists.

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).