OK, let's try again to be civil to each other. I probably should have simply thrown the offenders off the list and been done with it, but I was in no mood to deal with this while I was at work. Those involved can consider themselves on probation.
Once again, the purpose of this email list is to help others build and fly KR aircraft (or anything similar), not to tear each other down for sport! As we've just seen, little jabs (even if followed by smiley faces) can light off big bombs. Please refrain from either side of this behavior. Given that many people apparently can't find the rules on a website, they are reprinted below. Please read and comply with them, especially you smart phone users who haven't bothered to figure out how to delete the majority of the last post before you add your two cents worth to it and repost it all over again. 1) Think long and hard before you publicly flame somebody on this list. This list may not be like others you've been on. We don't do that here, period. If you have a personal problem with another lister, you need to address it off the list and spare the rest of us your angst. If you disagree with something somebody else posted, you can disagree in a nice manner without getting all bent out of shape. Just point out your side of the discussion and let others be the judge. Public flaming and superfluous bad language will not be tolerated. 2) When replying to a post, delete everything except one or two key sentences from the previous post. It's really ridiculous to have to search thru 3 or 4 pages of stuff to find down at the bottom where some clown wrote "me too". Carrying all that useless baggage around from previous posts also gives people fits when searching the archives later, as they end up getting 10 hits for the same message. 3) Conversely, at least put SOMETHING in the post to remind us what you're replying to. A post like "yeah, that's how I did mine and it works great" doesn't mean a thing if you don't know what the guy's talking about, so please cut and paste some of what you're replying to above your comments. 4) Carefully consider whether or not you even need to reply to a post. Saying "me too", or "I don't know" doesn't contribute to the thread, it just makes the list more bothersome. If you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should be listening, rather than talking. There are FEW people who know everything about everything. Try to stick to things you KNOW about, and let others answer the rest. A corollary to this is if you find yourself making more than five posts in a single day, you probably need to "stifle yourself"! 5) Try to write "keeper" posts if you're the expert on something. Cover the whole issue, answer all possible questions, address both sides of an issue, and make it a post that others will want to save or print out and keep. Those are the gems that we all search for on KRNet. 6) Put your name and email address in your signature to make emailing others "offnet" easier. If we all had our addresses at the bottom of our posts, it would be far easier to "email direct". If it's blue just click on it, if it's not, cut it and paste it into the "To" box. If throwing your email address out on the internet makes you nervous (and it should), camoflage it a little by replacing the @ symbol with "at", or something similar, so that bot crawlers won't know what to do with it. 7) If you don't have anything substantial to say, please don't post anything. This is a KR list, and as such, really needs to stay focused on KRs, or at least airplanes. With over 600 people on the list, if we all decided to say something every day we'd have a real problem. Ask yourself "do 600 people really need to see this, or are 600 people going to be annoyed by this?" Personally, my time is pretty precious to me, and I hate to waste it reading inane email. And is it something that you could find somewhere else? 8) Don't send enclosed files (except small photos) directly to the list. Either post it to a web site or get someone else to post it so others can see if they want, but don't have to if they don't. Also, enclosures are famous for carrying viruses, which we could all do without. I usually delete messages with enclosures immediately, unless I'm expecting something from that person. I don't have three days to rebuild my computer "for fun". And by all means, arm yourself with an anti-virus program such as Malwarebytes. It's free and it works better than most. There are other FREE antivirus programs out there. GET ONE! 9) If you have something you want to share, specify that you want replies to go offline. It's nice to say "hey, I've got the holy grail on thingamajigs, anybody want it?", but when 15 people reply online that they want it it gets kinda painful wading thru all of those posts for nothing. A gentle reminder to "reply offline" and furnishing your email address will be a big help. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that just about everybody would like to know more about something helpful, just post it and get it over with. 10) Do not advertise commercial products to this list. It's OK to let folks know there's a new service or a new business, but point them to web site. We don't need a bunch of advertising here. Personal testimonials as to a product's usefulness are welcome anytime, as long as it's not YOUR product. Advertising and selling KRs, KR parts, or something that can be used on one IS permissible anytime, however. Just don't go overboard if it's your business you're "selling". 11) Try not to take things personally. We're all here to help each other. There are usually several ways to take comments. Always try to pick the "nicest" interpretation, rather than trying to read animousity into a post. It's a lot easier to just ignore a snide comment and let it slide. Try to avoid "having the last word". 12) It's OK to interject some personality into emails, just make a contribution while you're at it. I like to let other KRNetters know who I am and what my interests are, but I try to tack that sort of stuff to the bottom of a post in which I've made some sort of contribution to the cause. 13) Keep personal stuff offline. Finding that some other KRNetter is from your neck of the woods isn't a good enough reason to bother us all with your efforts to strike up an acquaintance. Email him direct, rather than to the list. 14) Do not forward "chain mail" or ANYTHING that urges the sender to "send this to everyone in your address book", or "forward to all your friends". These are almost always either hoaxes, viruses, or just plain don't have any place on KRnet. This includes messages dealing with politics, nationalism, or religion. There are plenty of email lists where you can flood your email inbox with warm, touchy-feely messages from the heart. KRNet is NOT going to become one of them! I have already thrown one of my best friends off the list for doing this, mainly because he started the sentence with "I'll probably get thrown off the list for this...". He was espousing his political view...exactly the same as mine, but the rules are the rules, and even I abide by them. Don't throw down the gauntlet, especially when you know better! 15) Change the subject if the thread starts to deviate from the original intent. This makes searching the archive much more productive and far less time-consuming for future builders who are in search of information. 16) Please read ALL of your messages before replying to ANY of them. Why? Because much of the time, your reply will have already been answered by somebody else (or lots of people), and your reply may just be redundant, or even worse, already disproved by somebody that knows more about it than you do! 17) The best way to send photos to the list is to put them on a website somewhere else and send the link to the list. If that's over your head or you only have one or two, you can send them direct to the list, as long as the total size doesn't not exceed ~200k (a total of 250k, but your text and "encoding" will cost you some of that). That's likely only one or two pictures. This means you will likely have to shrink it down to something reasonable like 800x600, AND compress the image 50% using something like IRFANVIEW, a free image processor available online. If it's oversize you'll get a message that the moderator is considering it, but the same guy that wrote this is the moderator, so you can guess what the answer is. If you can't find an image processor and can't post it online and send a link, you likely should not be building an airplane either. It's really not that tough. I've posted a LOT of 70k images on the list and on my website that are quite acceptable. Surely you can do it with three times that allotment. 18) Those who violate these suggestions may find themselves wondering why they don't get KRNet mail anymore. I reserve the right to throw anybody overboard that I see fit... Other KRnet info is given at http://www.krnet.org/info.html . -- Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com
