Chalkhills: Posting and Style Guidelines

Posting and Style Guidelines

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To make it a little easier on everyone reading and posting to Chalkhills, here are a few suggestions on list etiquette, posting content, format and style of submissions.

Please remember:

Please try not to send HTML or Rich Text email to the list. Check the settings of your mail reader application and turn off these options. The Chalkhills digest software will discard HTML and Rich Text messages (as well as discarding other non-text attachments). Remember, not everybody has a mail reader which can handle fancy messages. Also, if you send an HTML or Rich Text email message, I might think it is spam, in which case I will probably not read it. It won't make it to the list, either. HTML is also widely used to hide viruses, phishing scams, and other malware in email messages.
Please do not use Chalkhills to send non-XTC information. Especially do not send political information, chain letters, Ponzi schemes, unsolicited advertisements, virus warnings (Note! Good Times is a hoax), or the message about the little boy who wants postcards. Chalkhills maintains a "zero tolerance" policy in this regard. If you send spam, chain e-mail, or other such message to the Chalkhills list, you will be immediately removed from the list.
If you have information which you believe is of interest to Chalkhills subscribers but is not directly XTC-related, either send a SHORT note to the list asking subscribers to send you e-mail for more information, or post a SHORT message with a URL to a Web page. In other words, give the subscribers a CHOICE, don't force your message down their collective throat.
Please read the Chalkhills Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list before you post. You may find your questions have already been answered.
Subject lines should be used very carefully. Try to make sure the subject of your message reflects the content. If you are replying to a posting in the digest, try not to use the default subject, which seems to be "Re: Chalkhills Digest #3-33". Rather, change the subject of your posting to refer to the original subject, for example, "Re: The Big Express Sucks!". If you do not include a useful subject line, one may be assigned without warning (and you might not like it).
If you want to ask a "general survey" type question, such as "What are your top ten favorite albums of all time?", please ask everybody to e-mail their answers to you directly. Then summarize responses to the list, if possible. If it is not possible to summarize (for example, how do you summarize Top Ten lists? You don't.) make the answers available on the Web and e-mail them directly to anyone who asks, and post a note to Chalkhills notifying us that the answers are available (include URL and e-mail address).
If you use a signature (from your ".signature" file), please keep it to four lines of text or fewer. Your e-mail address already appears in the header of your posting, so no need to repeat it in your signature. If you include a signature that is longer than four lines of text, it may be removed without warning.
Try to always keep the length of the lines in your message to 75 characters or less. The standard width of a terminal screen is 80 characters, but when a reply includes your message, the length of lines can grow, so leave a little room for further discussion. Yes, some of us do live in the past.
If you are replying to a message from the digest and you are quoting the text of that message, please try to edit the included text down to the minimum necessary to convey the gist of what you wish to reply to. The full message can always be retrieved from an earlier digest, and all digests are archived.
Please do not send binary files to the list. If you have an image or a sound file you wish to share, place it in a public WWW or FTP space. If you do not have access to such a space, I will consider placing it on the list space.
Please turn message acknowledgment off. The list is not interested in knowing when you read your mail.
When someone asks a question, many people send out identical answers. When this happens, dozens of identical answers appear in the digest. Mail your answer to the person and suggest that they summarize to the list. This way the list will only see a single copy of the answers, no matter how many people answer the question. And if you post a question, please remind people to send you the answers by mail and at least offer to summarize them to the list.
When you request information from the list, it is common courtesy to report your findings so that others can benefit as well. The best way of doing this is to take all the responses that you received and edit them into a single article that can be sent to the list. Take the time to strip headers, combine duplicate information, and write a short summary. Try to credit the information to the people that sent it to you, where possible.
White space is not wasted space -- it greatly improves clarity. A blank line only adds a byte to the length of your message, so don't be stingy if it will help make your meaning clearer.

Some of these suggestions were cribbed wholesale from the Hints on Writing Style for Usenet article, once regularly posted to Usenet News (that obsolete online communication mechanism of a time long gone).