FAQ's for Frameconnews

With the growth of the membership of frameconnews it is inevitable that an outline should be drawn up of Do's and don'ts and this is it.

Firstly the mailing list is managed from Manchester, UK. by me. It is run in my spare time and funded by me. I have a consulting connection with a mountboard company and write for a UK trade magazine on picture framing issues, and have been involved in framing one way or other for 25 years. The list is moderated by me, not censored.

Conventions that fall under the term netiquette are applied here. For a definition of netiquette I suggest you visit http://whatis.com/netiquet.htm Whatis.com is an excellent source of knowledge for those that are new to the 'net. Spam and flaming are considered to be neither professional nor scientific and so I may return your mail and ask you to moderate it.

Advertising is a difficult one, since often the use of some information about where to get a product or a branded item is helpful. However, a whole page devoted to the approbation of your product will be considered spam. Feel free to mail me direct, so that I can suggest ways around this problem.

Flaming refers to heated or overheated discussion. I cannot see that this will ever be a problem in this genteel area of human endeavor.

This list is archived on that great achievement of Stanford University CA, Conservation OnLine. With thanks to Walter Henry.

Currently we are run out of a commercial mailing list site at http://www.egroups.com/group/frameconnews you may wish to visit this site, as there are a few features that could be of interest. We are working on running it from Stanford.

  1. To post to the group send a message to: frameconnews@egroups.com
  2. To get off it mail me at Stephen.Todd@btinternet.com
  3. If you change your email address please mail me.
  4. If you are replying to an item in a frameconnews mailing, in almost all cases you should send your reply to the list, rather than sending private mail to author of the item. The aim here is to make your responses available to everyone. Once in a while, I as moderator will direct you to respond directly to the author, but this is meant to be a public discussion, so this is uncommon.
  5. Can you put a meaningful subject in the subject line of your email, `Re: Charlie's mail' is not as helpful as `re: Alpha Particles'
  6. This follows on from 5, in that if you want to post on more than one subject can you do so in separate mails.
  7. If you need to use a `Hotmail' type of address I may ask for references from your organisation. This is for the protection of the group.
  8. FATG is understood by most UK users, but please use the full organisations or other acronyms full name followed by its initials for it's first usage, thus: Institute of Paper Conservation (IPC). This applies to your address, please be aware that we have members from New Zealand to Hawaii (taking the long route)
  9. Please try to set your email program to send plain text. US ASCII is the usual. And 64 characters per line would be nice.
  10. If you wish to express yourself in monetary terms bear in mind that the dollar symbol is about the only one that works on all systems so use terms such as GBP - Great British Pounds.
  11. You may find that the spelling of words has changed from your original, since the spelling checker may do its own thing. Please don't take offence.
  12. At the moment we can cope with elaborate signatures [those that your email program puts in for you] but hyperlinks may be stripped out (frameconnews@egroups.com is an example of a hyperlink)
  13. If you are quoting someone else a hyperlink to a web source or a proper reference in the format:
  14. Author, Article, Journal, Year, Volume, Number, should be enough to keep everyone happy.

That's all for now. July 1999.