*********************************************************************
NOTE: You are receiving this file as a result of your subscribing to
the Tango-L list (General Discussion on the Argentine Tango).
There is another complementary list TANGO-A which is for announcements
of Argentine Tango events worldwide. You may also want to subscribe
to
that list, which you do by sending e-mail to <listserv@mitvma.mit.edu>
with the message
subscribe tango-A Firstname Lastname
in the body of the message (replacing "Firstname Lastname" with your
actual first and last names).
*********************************************************************
All subscribers to Tango-L should read these rules--certainly before
posting anything to the list. These rules supersede previous
rules or
guidelines for this list. Subscribers to the list should note
that
they are guests of the sponsoring organization and the list owners
and, as such, are expected to comply with these rules, and agreeing
to conform to these rules is a precondition for participating in
Tango-L. Since these rules are intended to reflect the views of the
majority of the list members, however, your comments on them are
welcomed and encouraged, so that they can reflect these views more
accurately. Please send comments or questions about any of the
rules
to tango-L-REQUEST@mitvma.mit.edu ONLY, and NOT to the entire list!
Usage rules for the Tango-L mailing list
========================================
Last revised: 11 September 1999
NOTE: These rules _supplement_ Netiquette, the generally established
rules governing acceptable behaviour on the Internet. I.e., members
of
this list are still expected to have read and to follow those
guidelines. They may be obtained from your service provider,
or
from the Usenet newsgroups news.announce.newusers or news.answers.
CONTENTS/SUMMARY
================
1. Relevance of Postings
- Tango related only
- NO FLAMES!
- Announcements of local events should go to Tango-A
- No personal mail
- Language of postings
2. Copyrights
- Get permission before submitting copyright-protected
works
- How may your own articles be copied without your (explicit)
permission?
- Can _you_ copy other people's articles without their
permission?
3. Common Sense Stuff
- Be courteous
- Compile responses to your questions, and post back to
the list
- No "1-liners"
- Use meaningful "Subject:" line
- Don't quote original unnecessarily on followups
- Don't monopolize the list
- No binary files
- Be aware of cultural differences
- Don't post private correspondence without the author's
permission
4. Commercial Postings (Advertising)
- ALMOST ALL COMMERCIAL POSTINGS BELONG IN TANGO-A
- 1-time introductions of professionals or organizations
are OK, with
annual reintroduction (other postings to Tango-A)
- Postings unrelated to Tango are explicitly prohibited
- Disinterested 3rd-party reviews OK (if they are of local
scope, they
should be go to Tango-A)
5. List Abuse and Responses to Them
- Spam (obviously not permitted)
- Chain letters (obviously not permitted)
- NO DISCUSSION of list abuses on the list!
6. Enforcement of rules
- Monitoring of subsequent postings
- PRIVATE e-mail by other list members (NOT to the entire
list)
- If you aren't sure, ask the list administrator
- In extreme cases ...
7. Function of this medium
- Distribution only
- Responsibility for content lies with posters
1. Relevance
============
a. All articles should be related to the Argentine Tango or a directly
related dance or musical form.
b. Personal flame-wars are not permitted on this list. Heated
debates
on the merits or otherwise of a particular Tango technique, music,
style, etc., or even objective critique, positive or negative, of a
well-known Tango teacher, are perfectly appropriate; however, anything
that degenerates into personal attacks should be relegated to personal
e-mail. It is a strong preference of members of this list, as
well as
its hosts, the list owners, that this sort of "mean-spirited mood
[and] ... juvenile invective ... [that] has seeped into conversations
on
[some] Internet newsgroups and other computer talk forums"[1] NOT be
part of Tango-L. Besides, it is just plain boring to the 99%
of list
members not involved in the hostilities. Accordingly, you may
find less
tolerance from members of this list to violation of this rule than
to
most of the others.
[1] Langdon Winner in "The Culture of Technology: Privileged
Communications," MIT Technology Review,
Spring 1996.
c. Announcements of events of local scope should be posted on Tango-A,
which was created specifically for this purpose, and not on Tango-L,
which is primarily for Tango-related discussion rather than
announcements.
d. Do not send personal replies to the entire list; before sending the
mail, please think about whether it would be of widespread interest
to
the whole community, or mainly just to the original poster or to one
or
two other persons only.
e. English appears to be the de facto standard language of the list,
inasmuch as it is understood by a majority of list members. However,
articles may be posted in any language of the poster's choosing.
(Several postings appear in Spanish, and many of these are particularly
appreciated by list members, such as postings from Argentina or from
Spanish-speaking Tango authorities. Bilingual list members sometimes
voluntarily translate them into English. (Translations in the other
direction--from English to Spanish--have been rare, but are also
welcomed.) So if you can express yourself better in another language,
especially Spanish, you are welcomed to submit postings in that
language. If you request, at the top of your article, that it be
translated into English, it is quite likely that someone will do so.
2. Copyrights
=============
a. Do not submit any copyright-protected works, unless you have written
permission from the copyright-owner (and include a statement to that
effect).
b. Any article submitted to this list may be stored, archived, translated
into another language, made available for searches and retrievals,
selected and redistributed by a moderator, gatewayed to related lists
or
Usenet groups or related forums, or otherwise copied and/or distributed
electronically by automatic, semi-automatic or manual means.
Such
storage and redistribution is inherent to the function of the list,
and
any poster to this list acknowledges and permits such storage and
redistribution by the list owners or administrators, or other persons
authorized by them.
c. There are conflicting opinions about the extent to which original
articles distributed electronically on public forums are protected
by
copyright. These opinions vary from (a) "they are automatically
in the
public domain" (generally not considered supportable) to (b) "the author
has absolute ownership with or without a copyright notice." The best
course is for people reading or using others' articles to assume that
original material posted to this list is fully protected by U.S. and
International Copyright laws and agreements, and that they are
responsible for knowing about and observing these laws. (Authors,
however, should not assume that this position will necessarily be
enforceable.)
Notwithstanding legalities, the following is generally regarded as
appropriate usage by the Internet community for articles posted to
Internet mailing lists--however, these informal conventions are NOT
represented as being accurate, authoritative, complete or even legal:
- Copyright ownership remains with the article's author(s), whose
permission must be obtained for use beyond "Fair Use,"
even if there
is no explicit copyright notice.
- Casual electronic distribution (e.g., to friends) and reposting
to
related electronic forums, archives, etc., are acceptable,
as long as
this is done with attribution and for no monetary or other
tangible
consideration. If this is done in a systematic or
regular way (such
as creating archives, gatewaying to a local newsgroup,
etc.), the
permission of the list administrator must be obtained
first.
- It is common practice to quote back to the list in a followup
article, portions or all of an article originally submitted
publically to the list, with ones own comments interspersed.
- For non-electronic media, paid subscriptions, etc., limited
excerpting for reviews, summaries, etc., such as would
be permitted
under the "Fair Use" doctrine for any other Copyrighted
work, is
permitted, as long as the intent of the author is not
distorted or
misrepresented. The outright copying of an article
for
re-publication is almost always in violation of copyright
statutes,
unless you have obtained the permission of the author
first.
Publishers often use a "300-word limit on works quoted
without
permission"[2] as a maximum excerpting allowance
for large
works--although this sets a precendent, it is not part
of the
Copyright laws, so adhering to it does not guarantee that
you are
within the scope of "Fair Use." In particular, it is unlikely
to be
considered "Fair Use" for the sort of articles posted
to Internet
mailing lists, where 300 words may well be a large fraction,
if not
the entirety, of the work in question. It is suggested
(but not
guaranteed to be "Fair Use") that you use no more than
300 words
or 10%, whichever is SMALLER, on works quoted without
permission
in non-electronic media, paid subscriptions, etc.
[2] Paul & Sarah Edwards in "Publish,
Don't Plagiarize," Home Office
Computing, February
1996.
3. Common Sense Stuff
=====================
a. As with any community, it becomes a more pleasant place for us all
if
some common courtesy is maintained. This means refraining from
sarcasm
or attacks directed at other list members or groups, not demeaning
other
contributors, being welcoming to new members (or new posters) of the
list, etc. Don't fall into the trap of letting the absence of
face-to-face interaction lure you into forgetting the cordiality you
would show if you met the person at a live event, practica, etc.
Please also see the section of these rules on "No flames."
b. When posting requests for information, ask for information to be
sent
directly to you (rather than to the entire list) and offer to compile
the reponses for posting to the entire list. Then do it!
c. Avoid 1-liners and other trivia. One- or two-line responses
are
almost always junk mail, e.g., "I agree!" "Yes, me [sic] too!"
Either
add some more value by elaborating, or use personal e-mail to show
1-line
support for someone's position.
d. Make the "Subject:" field of your message as explicit a 1-line
description of the content of your message as you can. If you
have a
"digest" subscription and are following up to a previous posting, copy
the exact contents of the original "Subject:" line (assuming it is
an
appropriate one for your follow-up), prepend the word "re: " and use
that as the "Subject:" for your followup. Do not simply use the
digest
banner "TANGO-L Daily Digest from xxx to yyy" as the subject, even
if
that is the one that your mail reader generates automatically.
e. Don't quote the entire article when mailing a follow-up. Your
mailer
may make it easy to do this, but that's not a good reason to do so.
People have read the previous article, so you either don't need to
quote
anything, or just the specific points you are addressing in your
followup.
f. Don't "monopolize" the list. Don't feel like you need to reply
to
every posting on which you have an opinion, unless there is some
significant tango-related information you can add to it. So limit
your
submissions to no more than 4 per week, unless there are extenuating
circumstances (such as daily "field reports" from a major week-long
Tango Congress that you're attending). (List support functions,
such as
translations of articles posted by volunteer translators, or
administrative messages, do not count towards this limit.)
g. Don't post binary files, even if they are uuencoded. Similarly,
the
use of multipart MIME-encoded messages, even if they are all text,
is
discouraged, since it is rarely necessary on this list, and since the
use
of mail clients that support these is not sufficiently universal yet.
Other similarly annoying and unnecessary practices: Inclusion of PGP
keys, long signatures, etc.
h. There are innumerable cultures and cultural differences represented
on
this list. Many may not be fluent in English (or whatever language
you're posting in), and the e-mail medium makes it difficult to
interpret true intent. Human communication is 85% non-verbal
and 15%
verbal. Things can be said orally that, because of body language,
intonation, etc., take on a whole different meaning. In e-mail,
the
only thing transmitted is what is written. "Smileys" and other attempts
at denoting emotions are a poor substitute and can themselves be
misinterpreted. The following rule will always stand you in good
stead:
"Be generous in the interpretation of what
you read, and sensitive
in your language in what you write."
i. Privately received correspondence should not be posted publically
without the consent of the author. This could be either private
e-mail, or even an article from a small or intimate private discussion
group whose members may expect a high degree of privacy in their
postings.
4. Commercial Postings (Advertising)
====================================
a. Virtually all commercial Tango-related postings are in fact
announcements, either of forthcoming events, e.g., workshops or
special events, or of sources for Tango materials (e.g., CDs).
These announcements are now permitted on Tango-A, subject to
the posting rules of Tango-A, which are much more liberal in
this regard than those of Tango-L prior to the existence of
Tango-A. As stated in Section 1(c), such announcements are
consequently no longer appropriate on Tango-L and should be posted
on Tango-A.
b. Postings that are not directly related to the Tango are explicitly
prohibited.
c. Reviews of teachers, etc., by DISINTERESTED third parties
(whose only relationship is that of satisfied--or dis-satisfied-
customer) are not considered commercial postings, and are always
welcomed. If it is a review of a local event or a local teacher,
however, it should probably go as a follow-up to a posting to Tango-A.
(Such postings should include a statement of your lack of affiliation,
and that you weren't asked to make such a post.)
d. It is permitted to make a one-time introduction of oneself as a
Tango professional or a Tango organization (commercial, community or
non-profit) to the list membership, and this may be repeated no more
frequently than once a year. Note that this introduction should be
just that--information on specific events or classes should be sent
to
Tango-A.
5. List Abuse and Responses to Them
===================================
a. Spams. Every once in a while, someone will post an advertisement
to
all the mailing lists and/or newsgroups that he can possibly find (a
"spam"). Of course, this is unlikely to be related to the Tango and
since the poster rarely if ever subscribes to any of these lists, a
rule
that says "No spams" is irrelevant. However, we state this rule
anyway:
"No spams and no advertising unrelated to the subject matter of the
list."
(There are some built-in mechanisms to minimize the likelihood of most
spams reaching the list members.)
b. Distribution of Chain Letters. This is strictly forbidden by
the
policies of the sponsoring institution (MIT), and includes any posting
that explicitly requests further distribution in a manner intended
to
replicate in a chain reaction fashion beyond a particular discussion
group. The definition of a chain letter is not limited to those
which
request money--Virus "alerts," political petitions, attempts to
set world records for e-mail received and "e-mail bomb" requests are
some
other examples of what would be considered a chain letter.
c. Responses to Chain letters and Spams, or any other list abuse.
Should someone abuse the list in any way, whether or not identifed
in
these rules, the most important rule is that NO followup note or
discussion of any kind about the abuse should be sent to the whole
list, as that just multiplies manifold the junk mail created by that
spam. Appropriate responses are (in order of preference):
- Delete and ignore
- Write up a nasty letter to the originator, to get it out of
your
system, and then delete both the letter and the original
e-mail
(or send it to the INDIVIDUAL if you must, but it will
probably
bounce or go to the wrong person)
- Send a nice letter to the service provider from which site
the mail
originated, requesting that the offender be disciplined,
permanently
denied access, etc.
- Join one of the discussions on net abuse on some OTHER suitable
list
or newsgroup, where such things are discussed ad nauseum
- As far as this list is concerned, anything else, as long as
it does
NOT involve the entire list.
6. Enforcement of rules
=======================
In most cases, violation of rules by a list member is unintentional
and
only requires education of the offender as to proper usage. Less
often,
it is a flagrant or repeated violation by someone who believes he is
above the rules. The list administrators will generally send an
explanatory note explaining the problem. In the case of repeated or
severe violations (intentional or otherwise) the list adminstrators
may screen all further postings to the list from the individual(s)
concerned until there is positive evidence that the problem has
abated, in order to protect the list and its membership.
If you believe someone has violated a rule, send the person a politely
worded message informing him or her of that, preferably with the
relevant portion of these rules attached. Do this by private e-mail
ONLY--do NOT chastise the person publically on the list as this leads
to
the inevitable flame-war. This is NOT a suggestion to "mail bomb"
the
person; rather, it is hoped that a large number of private reprimands
(especially in the case of intentional violations) will make it clear
that the behaviour was inappropriate. You may send a copy of
that mail
to the administrators at tango-L-REQUEST@mitvma.mit.edu if you would
like to.
If you would like to submit an article that you think is marginal, you
are welcome to e-mail it first to the list administrator at
tango-L-REQUEST@mitvma.mit.edu for an opinion.
If you believe that someone is flagrantly or repeatedly violating the
list rules and the the administrators are not controlling this
properly, please forward the relevant messages to the administrators
at
tango-L-request@mitvma.mit.edu and they will consider the situation.
It is hoped that the above procedure will suffice. However, to
protect
the list and its members, it is necessary to state that you may be
removed from the list, and/or kept from posting to it, under
circumstances including, but not limited to, the following: Extreme,
continued or intentional violation of the list guidelines and policies,
or of Internet usage conventions (as determined solely by the list
administrator or list owner, or person(s) designated by the list
administrator or list owner); violation of the acceptable use policies
of the sponsoring institution (MIT); violation of any applicable law,
including copyright law; any other action that, in the sole opinion
of
the list administrator or list owner, or person(s) designated by the
list administrator or list owner, may be harmful to the list, its
members, or the computer or communications facilities or networks that
support it.
7. Function of this medium
==========================
a. This list is only a distribution medium. Submitters are wholly
responsible for the content and appropriateness of all mailings made
to
the list.
b. Although the list administrators attempt to limit abusive behaviour,
and retain full authority to remove members from the list or restrict
their access to the list, with or without cause, this is fundamentally
an open and public list and the list administrators, list owners, and
sponsoring organizations are not responsible for the policing of this
list or their members, or for the content or source of information
that
appears on this list.
Shahrukh Merchant
"Tango-L" co-administrator
tango-L-request@mitvma.mit.edu |
