GUIDELINES FOR THE EE LISTSERV

The EE Community Listserv allows graduates of the EE Workshop to send messages to the entire EE on-line community via e-mail. It is another benefit of our commitment to provide continued growth and community cohesiveness after the EE Workshop. This service provides us with an effective method to communicate and dialog with each other.

The EE Listserv automates the posting of your messages to the EE Online community. In general, there is one central e-mail address that you use to send and receive all messages between all members of the EE On-line Community, and a separate e-mail address for requests to join or leave the list and other administrative matters.

If you can use e-mail, you can use the Listserv. You do not need any new technical skills to participate. You do not need to change anything on your computer or on your current e-mail.

The EE Listserv communication exchange policies are defined by the participants. Please be conscious of the appropriateness of your postings and of the diversity of the community. And please be patient, as we find our way, with those whose sense of appropriateness differs from yours.

This modern form of communication is another benefit of our commitment to provide continued growth and community cohesiveness after the EE Workshop.

QUICK TIPS

Send messages only from the e-mail address at which you are subscribed to the list.
Remember to include your first and last names, and the month and year of your EE graduation, in every message you post.
To save time and effort, whenever possible use the website (http://www.ee.org/maillist/) to manage your Listserv subscription options (to your change e-mail address, unsubscribe temporarily or permanently, change preferences, etc.), rather than sending a message to conductor@eeorg.net.
Be mindful that our community encompasses a wide range of tastes, interests and standards of appropriateness.
When requesting recommendations, referrals and similar information, consider whether to ask that responses be sent only to you off-list (which helps to minimize Listserv traffic) or to the entire list (so everyone may benefit from them); when responding to such requests, consider which type of response is most appropriate; if you don't want your response shared with the entire list, say so; if you have received off-list responses, consider whether it may be appropriate and helpful to summarize them and post the summary to the Listserv.
Avoid posting repetitive announcements of the same products or services.
Avoid posting commercial solicitations from or on behalf of non-EE graduates, unless in response to a specific request for recommendations.
Avoid posting periodic newsletters (but one-time announcements of your products or services, or of new offerings or locations, are OK).
Avoid posting chain letters, petitions and items that have been forwarded multiple times, unless you have first verified their accuracy and timeliness, and removed all the headers, e-mail addresses and intervening comments.
Keep the total message size to 250 KB or less, including all attachments, and scan all attachments for viruses before posting them to the Listserv.
Keep Listserv messages within the EE community, unless the author has requested wider circulation or given prior approval for it.
If you must criticize another person's message, do so lovingly and in the spirit of the workshop.
When re-posting any material from a newsletter, another listserv or any other external source, include a brief statement at the beginning of your message indicating how the material relates to the Listserv or the EE Community (or what you find notable about it), cut and paste only the pertinent part into your message, include a concise and descriptive subject line, and if possible use only plain text format.
Always include a subject line which clearly, but succinctly, identifies the general nature of your message.
When posting a forwarded item, always includes an introduction stating both that you have personally verified the information and how you did so.

RECEIVING MESSAGES

If you are subscriber to the EE Email Listserv you will automatically receive all emails that are posted to the EE Online Community by any member of the community.

SENDING MESSAGES

All messages that you want to send to the community should be e-mailed to: community@eeorg.net. Remember that you can only post messages from the e-mail address at which you are registered with the Listserv. To maintain the Listserv's members-only status, messages sent from other e-mail addresses are rejected.

Messages intended for, or that could be best served by, a single person should be sent only to that person and not to the Listserv. Keep in mind that if you click "Reply to All" when replying to a Listserv message, your reply will go to everyone on the Listserv.

When requesting recommendations, referrals and similar information, consider whether to ask that responses be sent only to you off-list (which helps to minimize Listserv traffic) or to the entire list (so everyone may benefit from them); when responding to such requests, consider which type of response is most appropriate; if you don't want your response shared with the entire list, say so; if you have received off-list responses, consider whether it may be appropriate and helpful to summarize them and post the summary to the Listserv.

MESSAGE FORMAT

Signature

When sending a message, please include the following information, preferably in a "signature" at the bottom of the message:
1. your first and last names
2. the month and year of your EE graduating class

Subject Line

Always include a subject line which clearly, but succinctly, identifies the general nature of your message. Doing so enables the recipient to quickly determine whether to read or skip your message, and will go a long way toward making the Listserv as useful as possible for everyone.

HOW TO JOIN THE LISTSERV

All new graduates who have registered their email address with EE are automatically subscribed to the EE Community Listserv. For all other EE graduates who wish to join, please send a request, from the e-mail address you wish to use for sending and receiving messages, to conductor@eeorg.net. Be sure to include your first and last name, the month and year of your EE graduating class, and the message: "enroll me in the EE Community Listserv."

Only graduates are eligible to join the Listserv. All requests to join will be verified with the EE workshop master database.

You can also join the Listserv by using the website link (http://www.ee.org/maillist/) included at the bottom of every Listserv message (see USING THE LISTSERV WEBSITE, below).

HOW TO REMOVE YOUR NAME FROM THE LISTSERV

It is very simple to remove your name from the EE Community Listserv - just send an e-mail to conductor@eeorg.net with the message "unsubscribe."

You can also remove yourself from the Listserv by using the website link included at the bottom of every Listserv message (see USING THE LISTSERV WEBSITE, below).

USING THE LISTSERV WEBSITE

You can manage your own subscription to the Listserv by directing your web browser to http://www.ee.org/maillist/. That page contains links and instructions that guide you through common maintenance tasks, including: requests to join the Listserv, changing your e-mail address, unsubscribing from the Listserv temporarily or permanently, electing whether to receive messages individually or combined into digests, changing your password, and requesting a reminder of your password.

Using the website to manage your subscription allows you to make changes immediately, wherever and whenever you have Internet access. It also lightens the burden on the community volunteers who manage and moderate the Listserv. Another advantage to using the web site is that changes made there take effect immediately, while those requested by e-mail may take several days to complete.

The website also allows you to view past Listserv messages that you may have overlooked, deleted or misplaced. We encourage you to use this community resource.

CONTENT GUIDELINES

We, the EE Community, set our own standards to guide the inclusion or exclusion of specific content in Listserv messages. We recommend that everyone be mindful that the purpose of this service is for community messages and EE business. In general, such a Listserv is not an appropriate forum to send general business solicitations, promotional or sales material. If you feel that an exception should be made for a particular message, send a request to conductor@eeorg.net first, including a copy of the proposed message and the reason(s) why you feel an exception should be made.

Inappropriate Postings

Unless you have received prior approval, the following items should not be posted to the EE Listserv:

recurring announcements of the same (or substantially similar) products or services offered by the same source
solicitations for products or services offered by non-EE graduates (unless in response to a specific request for recommendations)
periodic business or professional newsletters (one-time announcements of products or services offered by an EE granduate, or of a change in location or offerings, are permitted)
more than two announcements of the same course, seminar, workshop, meeting, party, trip, gathering or other event that occurs or begins at a particular date or time; a series of classes, workshops or similar events scheduled over a number of days or weeks will be considered a single event for the purposes of this guideline

Chain Letters, Petitions and Re-Forwarded Items

In general, we discourage the posting of chain letters, petitions and items that have been forwarded multiple times. Such postings are frequently inaccurate, outdated and/or otherwise ineffective in achieving their stated purposes. Many of them are outright hoaxes, and thus have the potential to waste the time and effort of many readers who may rely on them in good faith. If you do post such an item, please exercise judgment and care in doing so by, at a mininum, observing the following:

Make an effort to verify the accuracy and timeliness of the item. You might do so via personal knowledge, or by doing some quick web research; http://www.snopes.com is an excellent reference, and by using its search function you can quickly confirm the status of the items most frequently forwarded around the internet. Note that having received the item from a trusted friend is not a reliable indicator of its veracity, as your friend may have received it from someone else, who received it from someone else, etc., so that the ultimate source is unknown.
Strip out all extraneous matter. Rather than just clicking the Forward button, copy and paste only the relevant portion of the item into a new blank message, leaving behind the headers, e-mail addresses and comments of all the people whose hands it has already passed through. By doing so, you will make the item more compact and easier to read, while avoiding circulating the e-mail addresses of strangers.

Re-Posting Material from External Sources

Before re-posting any material from a newsletter, another listserv or any other external source, do the following:

Include a brief statement at the beginning of your message indicating how the material relates to the Listserv or the EE Community, or what you find notable about it.
Rather than re-posting an entire newsletter or digest, cut and paste only the pertinent part into your message.
Remember to include a concise and descriptive subject line.
If possible, use only plain text format.

Special Rule for Forwarded Items

The Rule

A special rule applies to material that has been forwarded one or more times. Such items will be rejected out of hand UNLESS the person submitting the item includes an introduction stating BOTH that they have personally verified the item AND how they did so. Please keep in mind that the mere existence on snopes.com of a reference to an item does NOT, by itself, constitute adequate verifcation. Items that by their nature require no verification (such as links to videos, photos, jokes, local event announcements, etc.) are exempt from this rule, but should nonetheless include a brief introduction so that readers can make an informed judgment about whether they wish to spend further time on the item.

Background to The Rule

This rule has become necessary to thwart the ongoing tide of false warnings regarding computer viruses, dangerous consumer products and ingenious criminal activities, as well as the doubftul stories of legal injustices and people in need. The sad truth is that the vast majority of such forwarded items are hoaxes, outdated, misleading or just plain false; when posted to the listserv, they typically result in a collectively huge waste of our time, energies and good intentions. The purpose of this rule is NOT to prevent legitimate warnings and appeals for support from being posted to the listserv, but only to insure that all such postings are properly vetted beforehand.

While snopes.com, scambusters.org/legends.html, urbanlegends.about.com and other sites devoted to exposing hoaxes and urban legends are excellent resources for researching forwarded items, the fact that such a site states that an item is true, or does not say it is false, does NOT constitute adequate verification. One has to read the web reference and make a judgment about whether or not it actually verifies the item in question. This is particularly true in the case of computer virus warnings.

For example, warnings about the Postcard virus have been posted to the listserv a number of times, usually accompanied by a statement that "I found this on Snopes and it's true." In virtually every case, it was clear that the poster had not taken the trouble to actually read the Snopes entry they had cited (http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp). If they had done so, they would have seen that, although there is a real Postcard virus, the specific item they were forwarding was a hoax based on that virus, and the claims therein were utterly false and misleading. In fact, the real Postcard virus has been around for a number of years, is typically recognized and handled by anti-virus software, and is NOT the impending disaster that the hoax claims it to be.

In general, warnings about computer viruses, worms, trojans and other malware should NOT be posted to the listserv, even if the threat is real. Such postings are almost always counter-productive because:

the vast majority of virus warnings are false, exaggerated and/or outdated;
as in the case of the Postcard virus, the warning may be a hoax even if the named malware is real;
such warnings, which usually caution against opening e-mails with particular subject lines, predictably result in both false positives and false negatives;
taken collectively, they are wildly impractical to heed, since they constitute a huge (and constantly changing) list of subject lines the user is urged to watch out for; and
most fundamentally, they distract attention and energy from the safe computing practices that really do help to protect your computer: using quality anti-virus software and keeping it active and up-to-date, not opening attachments unless they are both from a known source AND first scanned for malware, not clicking links in e-mails, not downloading files from unknown sources, etc.

Criticism and Disagreement

Remember that we are a large and diverse community, and that ideas about what may be interesting or appropriate will vary, sometimes sharply, from person to person. Please think long and hard before responding with criticism to someone else's message; if you do take someone to task, endeavor to do so lovingly, and in the spirit of the Workshop.

Attachment Size and Safety

Keep in mind that large file attachments often create several types of problems:

Many Listserv members are limited to slower dial-up connections; for them, downloading a posting with a one megabyte file attachment will typically tie up their computer (and telephone line) for 4 to 10 minutes, depending on their connection speed.
Most Internet service providers (ISPs) impose strict limits on the amount of storage available for e-mail and attachments. While those allowances are often quite generous, a single large attachment can sometimes push the recipient over their limit, thereby causing all subsequent (possibly critical) messages sent to them to bounce.

Accordingly, all messages posted to the EE Listserv should be 250 KB or less, including all attachments. The following suggestions may help you to minimize the size of your postings while still getting your message across:

Convert Word (.doc), WordPerfect (.wpd) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files to plain text (.txt) files, which consume dramatically less space.
Use photo editing software to shrink image (.bmp, .jpg, .gif, .tif, etc.) files.
Rather than attaching a document, simply copy and paste its relevant text directly into your message.
If a file is available on the web, or if you can post it to your own web site, simply include a link to it in your message instead of attaching it; for photos, use Shutterfly, Flickr or any of the other photo sharing web sites to post and share your pictures for free.
Briefly describe the file in your message instead of attaching it, and offer to send it privately to anyone who requests a copy.
To determine how large a file is, simply locate it in My Computer or Windows Explorer, right-click it and choose Properties; on a Macintosh, locate and select the file and choose Get Info from the menus.

Even files obtained from trusted sources may be virus infected. Before posting any attachment to the EE Listserv, first scan it with up-to-date anti-virus software to ensure it is safe.

PRIVACY STATEMENT

The EE Community Listserv is an exclusively private community resource. It will be used only for community communications.

Members names, e-mail addresses and other information will not be loaned, given or sold to any individual or organization.

Messages posted to the EE Listserv should not be forwarded to non-members unless the author has requested that the content be distributed to others, or you first obtain the author's express permission to do so.