[Techtalk] [FAQ] LinuxChix Policy FAQ (monthly posting)
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Sat Jan 4 20:40:48 EST 2003
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LinuxChix: List Policy FAQ
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LinuxChix: List Policy FAQ
Mary Gardiner
Jennifer Vesperman
Copyright (c) 2002 by Mary Gardiner and Jennifer Vesperman. This material
may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in
the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is
presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).
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| Revision History |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Revision 1.3 | October 2002 |
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| Significantly updated section about forwarding messages off-list, |
| added a question about list disputes and archiving, divided into |
| sections. |
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| Revision 1.2 | September 2002 |
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| Added Reply-To question |
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| Revision 1.1.1 | July 10 2002 |
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| Added question about non-English lists |
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| Revision 1.1 | May 19 2002 |
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| Added question about copyright material |
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| Revision 1.0 | January 29 2002 |
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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 month to every public LinuxChix list.
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?
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?
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?
2.2. Are there any other policies?
2.3. Why doesn't the reply-to point to the list?
2.1. Are there any rules?
There are two:
o Be polite
o 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?
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?
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?
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>.
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