[Buddha-l] Some gentle reminders

[Richard Hayes]

Dear denizens of buddha-l,

It has been some time since I last nagged contributers and subscribers of some 
simple matters of forum manners. Please try to observe these guidelines of 
good discussion group citizenship.

1. When responding to a message, please edit out everything from the message 
to which you are responding except for sentences necessary to give your 
response context. If you are responding in a general way to a previous 
posting, consider deleting the entire message to which you are responding. 
Most e-mail clients now have a thread function, so if readers want to see a 
previous message in a thread for context, they can easily do so. (If all else 
fails, you can visit the buddha-l archives and sort the messages by thread.)

2. If the only addition you have to make to a discussion is an expression 
affirmation or a note of thanks, please consider sending such responses 
privately to the author of the message you applaud rather than to the whole 
list. 

3. If you have the ability to control how messages go out from your e-mail 
client, please set your controls to send only PLAIN text (sometimes called 
ASCII) to buddha-l. In other words, please do not send messages with HTML 
formatting code, since that code is quite bulky and may contain Javascript 
commands with embedded viruses. (Even if you set controls to ASCII, you can 
still use UTF-8 encoding for languages other than English.) 

4. If you use an automatic responder while on travels or retreats, please set 
your buddha-l account to nomail so that your automated response does not get 
sent to buddha-l every time your account receives a buddha-l message or 
digest.

We moderators and buddha-l subscribers will be grateful to you for being 
mindful of these guidelines. (Corollary: we may curse you under our breath 
for failing to be mindful.)

http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l is the place to go to make 
changes in your subscription options. It also has a link to the archives, 
which you can view in various sorted orders. You can also download archives 
of past months in zip files.

Please resist the temptation to respond to this message with an "amen" 
or "sadhu!"

Moderately yours, 
Richard