| From: | Sam Jordan |
| Date: | 17 Dec 99 at 22:50:19 |
| Subject: | [warpup] WarpUp ML Guidelines |
Hi
When I wrote the first message of this kind, there were only a few
people in this ML, now the traffic has growed quite a lot, so it's
time to mention some points again.
First I think, that up to now the ML worked quite well, and I hope
that this will keep this way. To achieve this it is necessary that
everyone tries to follow some basic rules of how to participate
in this mailing list. Let me metion some of them here.
This mailing list basically serves to discuss PowerPC/WarpUp related
issues, although there are lots of related topics which fit to this
mailing list, too. It's also no problem to raise topics about PowerUp/
ppc.library in those discussions, but please remember, that there also
exist mailing lists directly related to PowerUp, so please ask
technical/specific questions there. Technical questions about ppclibemu
are certainly very welcome here, as it's very likely that such question
are answered quickly.
The basic idea behind this mailing list is to share knowledge,
experience, opinions, ideas and information, which might help
other people in solving problems or understanding different topics.
This mailing list is definitely *not* the place for any kind of
advocacy/propaganda/advertising. Avoid writing stuff like
'A is better than B, C sucks and D rules'. Usually different software
have different strengths and weaknesses, which also depend on the
people which use the software.
To avoid too high traffic and too much useless mails, try to avoid
sending off-topic mails as much as possible. For lots of unrelated
questions there are other mailing lists/newsgroups where you can
ask these questions.
It is also one primary goal for me to try to make sure, that we
have a good level of communication in this mailing list. Therefore
provocative and aggressive mails or flame wars are strictly not
tolerated. If people don't respect this then I will first kindly
ask them to do so, and if it still won't have any effect, then
those people must count on beeing excluded from this list (that's
something which I really don't expect to happen at all except
in very rare cases).
Additionally please don't treat newcomers as idiots, just because they
ask very basic questions. Everyone was a beginner sometimes in the
past and was happy about other people answering basic questions.
Please restrict the amount of mails to those which are useful. Very
often mails are sent which are of no use at all, so you should recheck
your mails quickly before you send the mails and delete those which
probably won't be of any use for other people. I am doing this for
quite some time already.
Try to avoid to use the word 'fact', it has really no meaning nowadays,
as every BS is meanwhile a fact, at least when reading some of the
newsgroups. If you assume something (such as bugs in software) then
write 'I suggest', 'I assume', '...IMHO/AFAIK' or write a question.
You should not try to make other people believing that the stuff
you write is proved and well-known, if it's only an assumption or
just something based on rumours.
Please also try to keep care of a good writing style:
- Don't write entire sentences in uppercase letters. This is interpreted
as shouting. Only use uppercase letters for single words, if you want
to highlight something (but you might better use _ or * to enclose these
words)
- Don't write 'xxx blah !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'. One exclamation mark
is enough in most cases, but never use more than two (this rule also
applies to other letters).
- *Please* don't use cascaded smilies (such as :((((( ). They look
annoying. You shouldn't use more than two parentheses in usual cases, but
try to only use at most one.
Well, if sometimes mails come in which don't follow every single suggestion
it's no problem at all. I just ask you to take care what you write to make
this ML a good place for us all.
bye