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Discusion List Guidelines

stc-accessibility List List Etiquette Posting Guidelines Discussion and Mailing Lists

To protect our mailboxes from overflowing, there are posting guidelines for our discussion list to which we ask our membership to adhere.

As with all discussion lists, however, there are a few rules and regulations that need to be followed by list subscribers in order to keep the list running smoothly. This note provides some instruction and helpful hints to help you manage your subscription to the discussion list. If you are already comfortable with subscribing to discussion lists, you may not need this note; however, you should save it for future reference in case you need to unsubscribe later or have other questions about the list. If you are new to discussion lists, read on! You should be able to do everything yourself, but if this is not possible, you may contact the list owner by sending e-mail to Cynthia Lockley at and she will try to assist you.

What you CAN discuss or post

This service is a discussion forum for members to ask about topics related to special needs for technical communicators such as

• how to do something
• questions about products and tools for special needs
• questions about special needs and technical communication (this includes all topics related to working as a technical communicator)

What you CANNOT discuss or post

• pricing, hourly rates, or fees. (This is illegal in the U.S. See http://www.hwg.org/resources/faqs/priceFAQ.html for more information.) Refer to the STC salary surveys for salary ranges in this area.
  
  
  • STC salary survey of technical editors and writers in the U.S. and Canada
  • "Hot Job: Communications," U.S. News Online 26Oct98
  
  
• no advertisements—no sales pitches or product marketing
• no personal attacks: do not ridicule, personally attack, or flame other members or nonmembers
• no jokes, chain letters, junk mail, or off-topic discussions
• no attachments of binary files such as .doc, .rtf, .pdf, .gif, .jpg, or .tif, etc.—binary items get converted to unreadable code
• no virus warnings

AccessAbility SIG discussion list rules and guidelines

1. Any STC member who agrees to abide by the guidelines may join the list.
2. Membership is only for STC members.
3. Posts to the list should be text-only, no .html mail please. Check your settings and choose "plain text". Every e-mail program has a way to do this and most methods are described in this handy dandy URL: Sending Messages in Plain Text
4. Postings to the lists should be related to special needs for technical communicators. (If you cannot find an answer on this list, post questions about technical communication to TECHWR-L or an equivalent general list.
5. No advertisements—no sales pitches or product marketing.
   
   
   • People looking for work may post their availability BUT MAY NOT SUBMIT TEXT OF THEIR RESUMES TO THIS LIST. Such messages should be minimal in length, no more than four or five lines, AND limited to a few basic qualifications and contact information such as an e-mail address, phone number, or web site. Mailman cannot accept attachments (they get converted to unreadable code).
6. Keep Your Posting Short. When replying to a posting, only quote the portions that are absolutely necessary to help the reader and delete the rest. If quoting an article, include only a brief excerpt and then provide a URL for people to read the rest if they are interested.
7. Lengthy discussions should occur off the list. Post an EDITED summary if the finished discussion would be interesting to list members.
8. "Subjects that generate more heat than light." Occasionally, a subject will come up that generates lots of posts because of its controversial nature. If the discussion threatens to overwhelm our mailboxes, or becomes nasty, we will ask that those interested in discussing it further take the discussion off the list.
9. No personal attacks: do not ridicule, personally attack, or flame other members or nonmembers. Anyone violating this rule will be unsubscribed from the list. You may or may not be given a warning by the list moderator before being unsubscribed.
10. No jokes, chain letters, junk mail, or off-topic discussions. No spam of any kind. Only subscribers to the list may post to the list.
11. No virus warnings. Send suspected "scare mail" to the list owner at . The list owner will verify and forward legitimate threats.
12. Subscribers who repeatedly misuse the list will be removed, with or without warning. The list owner (and assistant list owner, if applicable) shall have the final say in the matter.
13. Watch the Reply line.

    Before you hit that Send button, be sure to take a look at what is written in the TO: and CC: areas of the header. If your message shouldn't go to the list, it should not have stc-accessibility@mailman.stc.org in either field.
    
    If you automatically select Reply to a posted message, you will always send your message to the entire list.
    
    To respond to an individual, you need to retype their Reply-To: address in the TO: line. Only replies that you feel a good majority of the list would enjoy should go to the entire list.
    
    On that note, if you send a message to the list, please include your e-mail address in the body of your message. Some e-mail applications do not include your address so if you leave it out, members have no way to send you a reply.

14. Sending commands to Mailman (subscribe, unsubscribe, info, help, get, who, which, end)

    You must never try to send a command to the list address because it would be distributed to all the people who are subscribed and the command would not be processed by Mailman. All commands must be sent to with the command in the Subject: line. (the "Mailman address").

    Send list commands in the body of the message or the subject line.

    For more information about belonging to a discussion list, see http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html

    It is very important to understand the difference between the list address and the Mailman address, but fortunately it is not complicated. The Mailman address is similar to a FAX number that connects you to a machine. The list address is similar to a normal voice line connecting you to a person. If you make a mistake and dial the FAX number when you wanted to talk to someone on the phone, you will quickly realize that you used the wrong number and call again. No harm will have been done. If, on the other hand, you accidentally make your FAX call someone's voice line, the person receiving the call will be inconvenienced, especially if your FAX then re-dials every 5 minutes. The fact that most people will eventually connect the FAX machine to the voice line to allow the FAX to go through and make the calls stop does not mean that you should continue to send FAXes to the voice number. People would just get mad at you. It works pretty much the same way with discussion lists, with the difference that you are calling hundreds or thousands of people at the same time, and consequently you can expect a lot of people to get upset if you consistently send commands to the list address.

15. Please avoid sending e-mail attachments!

    Don't include e-mail attachments to list posts. This includes .doc, .rtf, .pdf, .gif, .jpg, .tif, and other binary types of attachments—binary items get converted to unreadable code. Instead, provide the data as a text file appended to your post, or offer to provide the data to those who request it, or put it up on the Web for voluntary download. Not everyone has the ability to read attachments, nor do we all wish to grab the typically high-byte files over our skinny home modem lines.

If you have questions or concerns about the list, please send them to the list owner, Cynthia Lockley, at

stc-accessibility List • List Etiquette • Posting Guidelines • Discussion and Mailing Lists

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