Rectified Version: 54...58:Final Version Suggestion: Add few more examples?
For experienced people an optional refined version of earlier guidelines in harder formalese can be kept ________________________________ Introduction: These guidelines apply to the WFS-India mailing lists. Please try to keep these in mind while posting, a sort of self censorship if you will. These are in place to help members follow the discussions better, and allow for encouraging,enriching and useful interaction within the community. Basic guidelines: * Politeness gets your more friends and colleagues willing to help you and support your cause, so politeness on the list is usually always a big WIN :-) It is also always nice to say words like "Thanks", "Thanks in Advance" and "Please". If you have offended somebody or do not agree with somebody, you can always say "Sorry". Do not pass sexist, racist, gender discriminatory or hateful remarks on others. * Freedom in software and culture is all about choice, even one that may be unpopular or niche at a given time. These may even lead to conflicting opinions and heated debates. If there is disagreement beyond a certain point, let all agree to be civil and choose to agree to disagree. Bottom line : not everyone is ever going to agree with you, then there wouldn't be any 'choice' left. Be happy with your choice and leave it at that. * One for all and all for one - so try to help out others whenever possible. * The mailing list archives hold record of past discussions. Often your question/issues have been discussed threadbare. It is a good habit to first search and see if that is the case.If your question is still not answered or if you have additional points to add, go ahead and post them. The mailing list archives can be found here: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Mail composition guidelines: * Be considerate to others : When we hit the 'Reply' option of our mail client, by default we end up quoting and re-posting the entire mail we are replying to. Doing so is the online equivalent of hogging a bus seat in a manner that our co-passenger barely has room to seat. So, try to save bandwidth, when replying to lengthy posts, by snipping off parts of the original mail that have no bearing to your reply. It is also good for the planet. Less bytes = Less electricity to push and prod them around = Less generation of greenhouse gases :-) * The top-posting bugbear: Adding your reply to the top of an existing post is called 'top-posting'. If you are coming from a corporate e-mail culture, top-posting is the usual norm and replies often start with 'pls refer to the trail mail'. Top posting is bad because it breaks threads and makes it difficult to read in natural logical order. However, as a matter of convention on Free software and the Cultural Commons, top-posting is often considered bad form. So, on WFS-India mailing lists interleaved, trimmed replies or bottom posts are preferred. An example of good reply style is shown below: ______________________________ [email protected] wrote: > I am facing a problem when i'm using any linux OS I think you're talking about the GNU/Linux OS. Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.are all GNU/Linux distros -- variants of the GNU system (with Linux as the kernel). > CPU fan always from start-up moving so fast , and <snip> It is a hardware bug, that is solved here: http://www.666.org ___________________________________ * Plain text - to be or not to be: Even Hamlet had a tough time with that, and so do we! In ancient days when the dinos ruled the Internet, plain-text ASCII was the one true option for email. However things have changed... and how! Earlier one had an option to prefer plain text over HTML and RTF for messages. However, these days, even if you do not intend to use HTML posts, often your mail client will automatically do it for you, especially if you even take a passing sniff at any Unicode (read that as any language other than US English) text inside your by-and-large english email. It is an option let to the user, do what you are comfortable doing, just bear in mind that an HTML encoded mail carries more than twice the size in delivery payload and most users will be converting it back to plain text. * When you post on the WFS-India mailing lists, your posts are going to be publicly read and archived, so appending lengthy quasi-legal privacy messages to your posts really makes no sense. If such a message is part of your standard e-mail signature/footer, consider switching it off when posting on WFS-India. * Use good understandable English language. Example of what-not-to-do "ne1 hr cn tell me whr to gt da source of vlc?". The correct way to ask would be "Anyone here can tell me where to get the source of vlc?" Sharing files and code snippets: * Managing large code-segments / log file output / stack traces: Sooner or later you are going to need posting these to get answers for your queries or to give replies to others' questions. The way to handle this is to use a pastebin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastebin) and point to it using the URL / web address in your post / reply. That way everyone remains happy. :-) Useful public pastebin sites are: * http://www.pastebin.com * http://pastebin.ca * http://pastebin.mozilla.org * If you are sharing code snippets, it is useful to share it through some specialised pastebins which work as code evaluators as well. These websites let you run your code live and give you a publicly shareable URL to your snippet. Useful code snippet sharing sites are: * HTML, CSS, Javascript: http://jsfiddle.net * PHP, Python, Ruby etc.: http://codepad.org * Almost everything: https://gist.github.com * If you dont know how to use these or can't seem to figure out on your own, we encourage you to ask on the mailing list. Someone will probably be too happy to help you, may be even conduct an online training session. * What if you want to share a file with the entire group : Upload it somewhere, there are plenty of file-hosting and sharing websites around. Find one that works best for you. If in doubt just ask on the list for options. Simply upload and insert the link to the file in your mail. Useful file upload sites include: * Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com * MediaFire: http://www.mediafire.com/ * Rapidshare: https://rapidshare.com/ * However, if you are sharing entire libraries or lengthy code or documentation that you have written, it makes more sense to upload your work to GitHub or Bitbucket, and sharing the link to your repository with the members of the mailing list. This will also help you learning more about version control in general. What to avoid? * Off Topic messages: Women in technology are still a relative minority globally, WFS-India seeks to address the gap in India, especially when it comes to Free Software and the Commons. So let us try being as close to Free Software and Open Source, issues affecting women and the traditionally marginalized like LGBT and their participation in technology production, ownership and use.If you feel the topic merits posting even if it does not fall within the above boundaries use the [OT] tag on subject line while posting such messages. * Using the list as a job board / promotional space: Commercial posts and job offerings etc. for anything to do with Free Software and Culture are welcome with a rider, as long as the subject line carries a [Commercial] tag. Also, the original sender should provide contact details where interested members may contact off the list. The member is not expected to treat this list exclusively as a job board or a business promotion space. On repeated attempts, a member may first be warned. However further instances may lead the member to lose the posting privilege / membership in the group. * If you're responding to a job posted on the list, make sure you do not respond to the list. Instead reply back to the original sender, using the contact details provided in the job posting. In the event when no separate contact details have been provided by the sender, compose a new message to the sender's email address without replying back to the list. * Cross-posting: Posting the same mail to multiple mailing lists at the same time is called cross-posting. People often indulge in this in their attempt to reach out to the maximum number of people at the same time. However, different lists have different objectives, goals and priorities and in general cross-posting is considered as impolite behavior. Try to refrain from the same as far as possible, if you are the OP (original poster) then posting same email to multiple list maybe okay for the first email, but posting follow-up replies to conversations on other lists and have these out of context replies pumped back into this list makes things confusing for members on this list. The latter action is actively discouraged. The members are encouraged to withhold themselves from such follow-up cross-posting as a sort of self-censorship. Repeated cross-posting in spite of objections from list members may result in revocation of posting privileges. * Hijacking threads: A thread begins when someone posts a new topic with a new subject line and not as a reply to another's mail. The discussion the generates around that topic is called a thread. Imagine a group of your friends discussion about Sachin Tendulkar's retirement date and suddenly you interrupt everyone by loudly demanding to know if 'Did United States Congress ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change?' When you do something like that on a mailing list it is called hijacking the thread. So, for every new question use a different subject line. Posting a new topic as a reply to an existing email in the list will make it appear as a comment on an existing thread. Instead, create a new email with a new subject line while sending a new topic or question to the list.This will ensure that you have a far better chance of getting an answer to your question or whatever you wished to discuss. And just like in the real world people won't see you as an intrusion/intruder and welcome you. * Illegal activities: This list has zero-tolerance for discussions that indulge in any illegal activities like software cracking, sharing cracks/serial numbers for proprietary, non-free software, copying/distribution of proprietary, non-free software whose End-user License Agreement (EULA) restricts such an action, passwords of accounts you are not supposed to have access to etc on the list. Doing so will result in summary loss of membership of the group. * Bigotry: Do not pass sexist, racist, gender discriminatory, or hateful remarks on others. Denigration or display of bigotry, even as off-color jokes towards any particular community, group, gender or country on the list are not welcome. * Personal Emails : As a group we socialize here. We also debate and discuss. If you wish to talk to or email a specific member, please do so by sending a private email to that member's email address. * No stalking : Romances and deeply meaningful friendship do often blossom between individuals on an online community. However any report of attempts to stalk or similarly harass a member may lead to life ban from membership as well as possible report of such activity to Law Enforcement Agencies * If in doubt, send an off-list message to the List Admin(s) and ask. ____________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in _______________________________________________ WFS-India mailing list [email protected] Message archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe, please login to your account at http://www.wfs-india.org/ and unsubscribe to the WFS-India list from your account settings. -- WFS-India - http://www.wfs-india.org
