Hey list, A number of things to cover. Please read on.
____________ New Zealand: I am stunned by the RSVPs for the upcoming meeting in Wellington. By my reckoning, over 50 people will attend next Thursday evening and it's their first meeting. You Kiwis! Always a surprise up your sleeves. Mike Brown and Terry Wood have certainly earned their places in the WSG core team. If only my passport was current... That's going to be some party! Next year is going to be very interesting for meeting groups. We will be starting Perth and Canberra in the new year and there have been quite a few other cities suggested in the survey (see below). ______ Texas: If you're in the Dallas or Fort Worth region, you should have received an off-list email about a potential meeting. I have only had two responses so far so please let me know if you're interested or if you're not interested so I know not to ask again ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). ________ Traffic: With over 100 posts a day lately, it's time again to ask that we cut down on frivolous posts. One of the most frequent complaints we get is about the signal-to-noise ratio on the list. Please stay on topic, no matter how clever your reply is. Send it back to the sender for a laugh, not the list please. We're not trying to stifle on-topic posts in any way. Signal is good, noise is bad. (Community is good too... Laughter is the best medicine (*(c) Readers Digest?)... Torn now... Noise is bad, let's leave it there.) If you have a question, please ask it, that's what the list is for. If you're just thanking someone for their input, do it directly. We can all assume you are being courteous and don't need to see it on the list. Also: * Turn off "read receipt" requests when posting to WSG. This is a daily problem for me as I get most of the receipts (to the list's reply address). * If you're going away over the holiday season and will be setting a vacation message, please unsubscribe before you do or send me an email ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) asking to be temporarily suspended and then remind me when you return to reinstate your subscription. We will terminate the membership of any member that has "Out-of-office" or "vacation" messages without notice from now on. * Please try to remember to set your message to plain text. HTML email causes sooo many issues on a list. We are still waiting for SmarterTools to give us the option of forcing only the plain text component of posts to the mailing list. This may be a while yet. ______________ Subject lines: Far too many "Site check please" (or similar) subject lines lately. People are happy to check your site and report back (hopefully directly to you and not the list unless there is a real lesson for everyone to learn and certainly NOT "Looks fine to me" replies) but it would help if you point out in the subject exactly what you need help with. So, "Site check - webboy.net - Nav may be an issue" is far better than just "Site check" (and no, I don't want an appraisal of my website, we know it needs work but it's way down the list :) ___________ Validation: Please remember to validate your mark-up/css and repair any errors before asking for help (unless you need help with the validator results) and please supply a link to the site/page AND the css file (if the css isn't contained in the head of the same page). This is a very important step. A lot of the problem you are wanting solved may well be caused by invalid mark-up. It also shows others that you are making a concerted effort and are not asking people to do your coding for you. _______ Survey: If you haven't already responded, can I remind you about the WSG Member Survey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=44544720503 (yes we know but the reporting this system does is excellent) The results of this survey will help shape the future of the group and the suggestions we are getting are fantastic. We have had responses from about 10% of the membership (by numbers) and the bigger the sample and range of ideas, the better the result. If there's something you don't (or do) like, please use this opportunity to let us know. We will be making significant changes to the website and membership process over the holiday season, and many of the changes will come from the suggestions in the survey. If you don't speak up now, your suggestions will not be part of the process. _______ Spirit: Play nice on the list please. Telling someone their site is "crap" is not nice (even if it is crap) and we will not be tolerating on-list rudeness any more. It's far easier to dump an ill-mannered poster than to put up with it and the successive posts (on- and off-list). As suggested, "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing". The only type of criticism on the list should be constructive criticism. That is all... P ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
