[649] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Proposal for mit-talk rules and new lists
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Sun May 13 05:26:10 2001
Message-Id: <200105130926.FAA26151@Press-Your-Luck.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@MIT.EDU, housing-talk@MIT.EDU
Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 05:26:06 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
This e-mail is an attempt to implement the desired mailing list
structures and rules as expressed by the mit-talk and housing-talk
communities. It also contains interesting information about other
mailing lists at MIT, and stuff.
If you have concerns about process, discussion is welcome.
synthesizing the survey results into a plan of action was a little
hard because not everyone agreed, and not everything was a simple yes
or no. I've tried to satisfy as many of the conflicting desires of
the community as possible. if you'd like to make an alternative
suggestions that, given the survey results, you think would make more
people happy, then please do so. keep in mind that not everyone will
want to subscribe to all of the *-talk or whatever mailing lists. the
idea is to let people get the stuff they're interested in without
getting too much stuff they're not, and without fractionating the
list structure too much. (Some people were concerned that making
more and more lists would degrade the community that's formed around
mit-talk, but on the other hand, other people complained that having
all the traffic on one list was doing exactly that.)
Anyway, read, be enlightened, and discuss as needed. If there are any
changes to be made to mailing lists, I'll allow a transition period
that lasts until after finals.
-B.
---NEW LIST ADMINS---
Please welcome our new talk-request list admins: dmaze, emarcus,
aatharuv, davidmac, and mrios
For your reference, a proposal for list admin "guidelines" is at the
end of this mail, and is hopefully not too far from current practice.
Thanks also to rjbarbal and akvar for volunteering if we were short on
help. If either of you wants to join talk-request in the future, just
let us know.
---THINGS YOU CAN ALREADY DO---
- Join ua-announce@mit.edu to receive official announcements from the
Undergraduate Association.
- Join the list summer-fun@mit.edu, a place to "for announcing and
planning fun things to do" on and around campus over the summer.
- Join events@mit.edu to get announcements of "parties, dances, and
events of interest to the MIT community". Encourage your social
chairs and officers to join so they can forward notices of interest
to your organization. (Are there any lists of social chairs we can
advertise this list to? I can think of two places - lgc-social, and
ua-social. Wasn't there some sort of attempt to create an
uber-social list at some point? Are there DormCon or IFC social
lists?)
- Visit http://diswww.mit.edu/charon/mit-talk/ to read the recently
created mit-talk archive! Read mit-talk without clogging up your
inbox. Retrieve deleted messages. Thank you, jhawk.
---PROPOSAL DETAILS---
mit-news
- Create a new mailing list, mit-news, for press releases from the
administration and governmental bodies, and other organizations
that have news or announcements that is of broad interest.
(I.e. something that would be printable as a story, small or large,
in the *Tech* or *Tech Talk*). Submissions from individuals and
forwards from other lists are welcome, as long as they are
directly related to MIT and contain new information.
- Opinions on the news should be directed to mit-talk, not mit-news.
- Rules for this list will be strictly enforced, and it would be
first to be moderated if abused.
- mit-talk will be a member of mit-news so it will receive everything
sent there. Discussion of items on mit-news must be directed to
mit-talk.
college-talk
- Create a new mailing list called college-talk, for posting news
about things happening at colleges which do not actually directly
affect MIT. Even stuff that happens at Harvard should not be on
mit-talk, unless MIT or some affiliate is explicitly mentioned.
Also good for discussing general college policies, or goings-on at
the federal level. Contributions from folks from other
institutions welcome.
mit-talk
- All posts must explicitly or implicitly involve the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, or its policies, members, current events,
or other things which are a part of it or affect it directly.
- Stuff involving other colleges and universities doesn't count. See
college-talk.
- Stuff involving general political questions which do not
*specifically* have to do with MIT (i.e. abortion, affirmative
action in general, free speech, Christianity, Objectivism, race,
gender, sexuality, free trade, corporations, democracy, the
American education system, etc.) should not be sent to mit-talk.
See Politics, below. If the discussion on another list happens to
wander back to say, MIT's affirmative action policy in particular,
people who are on both lists are welcome to *forward* but not
cross-post messages.
- Personal attacks are not welcome on the list, and should be taken
to personal e-mail or mit-yo-mama if they need be made at all.
Name-calling of individuals or groups is also inappropriate.
- Think before you post. Intelligent discussion is preferred over
mindless flamage.
- Please don't cross post to mit-talk and some other list that is
likely to drag us off topic.
- These rules will be posted on the web. [In the Institvte locker,
if no one there objects.]
housing-talk
- Enough people cared about keeping housing-talk separate that it
will not be merged with mit-talk. While technically discussion of
housing-related issues is welcome on mit-talk, there are people on
housing-talk who don't want to receive mit-talk e-mail, and some
people who would like to filter housing vs. non-housing discussion.
People are welcome to cross-post between mit-talk and housing-talk,
if the topic of discussion is the MIT housing system.
Politics
- General Political discussions and/or rants are not welcome on
mit-talk, mit-news, or housing-talk, even if they are inspired by
something previously posted there.
- There are four lists you may chose from to discuss general
political issues. Adjust your subscriptions and To: lines
accordingly.
politics - "Discussion of Politics and Philosophy. High
traffic."
spa-discuss - "For discussion of political news."
uninformed-political-rants - The obvious.
events
- No event announcements are allowed on mit-talk, mit-news,
college-talk, or housing-talk.
- Official press releases (not advertisements) from MIT and
governmental organizations about Institute-wide events are allowed
on mit-news and other appropriate lists.
- Announcements about political or governmental meetings, public
forums, or other political activities *directly concerning MIT
policy* are allowed on mit-news and other appropriate lists.
- Announcements for social events or any event sponsored by a student
activity that do not fall under the above exceptions are *not*
allowed.
- Notices for events happening at MIT should be directed to
events@mit.edu, summer-fun@mit.edu and/or other social lists which
we do not administrate.
- Event listings are available at http://events.mit.edu and
http://web.mit.edu/iap
- I will forward comments from the survey about events.mit.edu to its
maintainers.
List administrators:
- Handle add/remove requests for our lists, remove bouncing
addresses, and deal with mailing list emergencies.
- Have a responsibility not to censor or inordinately delay posts
that the community wants to get.
- Participate actively in discussions, but when wearing list admin
hats, must abide only by established community standards as to what
traffic is and is not allowed. Other than that, they don't use
their admin authority to impose their morality or opinions on
participants.
- Whenever they send e-mail with their list admin hats on, they cc:
talk-request@mit.edu so the other admins don't duplicate effort,
and to provide a sanity-check ourselves that they aren't abusing
their authority or doing something reckless.
---ADDENDUM---
Below are some additional suggestions based not on the survey, but on
my personal experience as a list admin, and the fact that various
other lists exist at MIT. I think these would be good to include in
the rules and policy document. Feel free to disagree, and I'll remove
things people object to. Additions also welcome.
-B.
General
- Do not bcc: any list without saying somewhere in the body of your
e-mail what list you sent it to. People who do not want to receive
your mail will not know what list they got it from, and they will
probably complain to inappropriate parties about it.
- No Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (S.P.A.M.)
- If you want replies to go to a particular address, set the
Reply-to: header in your message to that address.
Things Not to Post
- Community service events should be announced on events@mit.edu.
- Seeking a job? Seeking an employee? See http://web.mit.edu/seo/
or http://boston.craigslist.org/, or try postering on campus.
- Job openings for Course 6 things should go to anneh@mit.edu for
better distribution among people there.
- Giving something away? Use reuse@mit.edu or free-food@mit.edu.
- Selling something? Use reuse-sell@mit.edu.
- Looking for a thing? Use reuse-ask@mit.edu.
- Looking for housing? Got more housing than you need? Use
reuse-housing@mit.edu
- Giving away an ex-significant other, or posting a personal ad? Use
reuse-people@mit.edu.
See also:
- http://web.mit.edu/~pocky/Public/reuse.txt
for policies on use of the reuse lists.
- http://boston.craigslist.org/
for Boston-area jobs, personals, and housing
I also have an old FAQ explaining what ifc-talk, iltfp-forum, and
swassd are for, which I would include.
