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Email List Usage Policies

ABCD is a curious Harvard institution. It crosses all the traditional boundaries, and it is also a completely voluntary group. There are very few rules, and as such it is doubly important that ABCD members be aware of how their usage of the email lists affects other members.

Our hope is that the ABCD email lists will prove to be an extremely valuable resource for members. A place to ask questions, get important announcements, learn more about your computing environment, and exchange humorous anecdotes. At the same time, we hope that the emails that people receive don't start to intrude on their other activities in an undesirable way.

Things to Know:

We hope of course that you will participate and contribute your knowledge to as many lists as possible, but we also realize the time constraints placed on our members that may make this difficult.

Usage Guidelines:

When posting to any of the ABCD lists, we ask that you observe the following guidelines:

  1. Don't post to the main ABCD list
    1. When posting a request, comment, or information, PLEASE take a moment to consider where you are sending it. The main ABCD list has over 2000 subscribers, and many of them may not be interested in your issue, be using the same OS as you, be IT people, or be part of your school. So please consider first posting to one or more of the subgroups. You can always check the group pages to see what topics groups are interested in.
    2. If you are announcing a subgroup meeting, please cross post to the abcd-announce list.
    3. Posts about used equipment, free printer cartridges, server racks, floppy drives, etc. should be addressed to the abcd-hard subgroup.
    4. Job openings at Harvard or affiliates should be sent to abcd-jobs. Cross-posting to relevant subgroups is encouraged.
    5. Job openings at your friend's startup should be sent to abcd-jobs-other. Cross-posting to relevant subgroups is encouraged.
  2. But if you must ...
    1. If you feel that your audience is widespread and can't be targeted by subgroups, or if you didn't get a response to your first query, then by all means post to the main list.
    2. Ask that replies be sent to you off-list, or redirect replies to one of the subgroups. abcd-misc is an option if no other group seems appropriate.
    3. Offer to summarize responses and post back to the main list.

We hope that these guidelines will satisfy both those who thirst for information in a free exchange, and those who want their inboxes to remain quiescent except for the occasional ABCD meeting announcement. Unless things get really bad, of course, we will not enforce any restrictions on the main ABCD list, but we ask that you respect the desire of some of our members to be left alone. Thank you, and please, continue to send your ideas, comments, and suggestions, directly to us and to abcd-misc@abcd.



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last updated: Sun Sep 29 14:17:43 2019 Copyright 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College