[vox] new posting rules

[Peter Jay Salzman <p@MAPSdirac.org>]

dear all,

we had an officer's meeting last night and came to the following decision.
limiting discussion topics is something odious to me.  vox is a chatter box
where we can discuss politics, cookie recipes, and yes, even linux.

but clearly something has to change in response to the complaints we've had.
so here's the plan.  it relies heavily on self regulation:

1. as before, i'm asking people to make a mental note of high volume days and
   refrain from posting non-linux related messages on those days.  if you
   really have an opinion or reply that you want to get off your chest, go
   ahead.  but be aware of the days we're getting lots of off-topic traffic.

2. as before, please trim quotes that don't relate directly to your response.
   keep attributions in.  on vox-tech, it's sometimes important to keep the
   whole message in, especially if trying to diagnose problems.  on vox, it's
   much less important.

3. new:  all non-linux, non-computer, non-lugod posts should have the
   string [OT] in the subject.  this allows people to filter out the noise
   with procmail.  if we all follow this rule, the signal to noise ratio will
   go infinity. 

   don't know how to use procmail?  we'll teach you.  it's worth knowing.
   you'll even learn simple regex to boot (the topic of our next meeting, btw).
   for those who don't use linux to read their email, well, no sympathy
   here.  :)  i'm sure windows has filtering, but i've never used a windows
   email client in my entire life, so i have no idea.  if it doesn't, windows
   sucks even more than i thought.

if someone posts off-topic material and accidentally omits [OT], please
add [OT] to the subject in your reply to the list and then send a private
email to them reminding them to put [OT] in their email.  just be polite.  :)

this should keep people who don't want offtopic posts on vox happy.  it
should also keep people who like offtopic posts but get annoyed at huge
bandwidth happy.

one more thing --- vox-tech is archived, and will soon be searchable.  so if
you remember that "mike" posted a great message about trying to "configure
modems", you can search the archive by keywords "+mike +modem" .  this makes
it more important to keep technical discussions on vox-tech.  if someone
posts a technical message to vox, please take the liberty of forwarding
replies to vox-tech (and indicate so in the header).

i think this is the best of all worlds.  with a little self-regulation, we
can keep everyone happy without being too fascist. 

i know i'm asking for trouble here, but does anyone have a problem with
this?  let 'er rip.  i'm pretty sure most people will be happy.

thanks for being patient everyone!
pete


ps- perhaps we should have a procmail and formail talk soon?  i'd do it, but i
don't know much about formail right now.   anyone?

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