Guidelines & Suggestions
The following suggestions are provided for your general guidance. While failure to comply with these suggestions might not result in expulsion from the forum, it might result in confusion, embarrassment, or ineffective communications. Interpretation and enforcement of policy matters is at the discretion of the Forum Management.
1. Citation of sources.
State your sources. Genealogy information is incomplete and of little use without supporting evidence. Please include citations of the sources for relationships you publish. If no source is known or available, then state "source unknown" or state that the information is theory needing proof.
2. Impressions.
In a forum such as this, you are judged by the quality of your written communications. So take care about how you present yourself. For example, your e-mail messages should be typed properly with capitals and spacing in the right places. Grammar and spelling should be checked before sending. Messages you publish are archived and made available for future researchers. So, your messages may be read years from now by one of your relatives or future descendants. Think about that before you hit the send command.
3. Lurk a while.
Before you join in a discussion, read some of the messages to get a feel for the material being discussed. Try searching the message archives to see what has already been discussed on the topics you are interested in researching. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are a good source of background information on the nature of the group. FAQs save you from asking a lot of basic questions that others have heard too often already.
4. Some Do's and Don'ts.
Do choose your words carefully. This forum is a public medium. You have no control over where your words go after you send your message and you can't edit them after they are sent.
Don't write anything that you wouldn't say to a stranger face-to-face.
Do re-read your message carefully before you send it.
Don't write e-mail messages in a hurry (or a temper).
Do quote from the original message when replying. Don't quote excessively.
Don't write anything that isn't suitable for all ages, sexes, religions, races, etc. Remember, this is a public forum.
Don't overuse the 'cc' function. It is usually a bad idea to send copies of a message to many Forums. Consider the Forum topic and send your message where it will be on-topic and most appropriate. Copying a message to more than 5 Forums is usually considered annoying behaviour.
Don't send "thank you" messages to an entire forum when you are only thanking a few people.
Don't let brevity triumph over clarity. There's no point in being brief if your message is not understood by the people you want to communicate with.
Don't try to impose your personal philosophy on others about how the world, or the forum, should work. There is room for a diversity of attitudes and philosophies. Try to be tolerant. If you must complain, do it nicely.
5. Effective communications.
Good e-mail is like most other good writing. To compose effective e-mail messages try using the following suggestions.
* one subject per message;
* use a descriptive subject heading;
* be concise - keep messages short and to the point;
* write short sentences;
* use bulleted lists to break up complicated text;
* quote selectively from the original e-mail when replying;
Messages can be made more concise using three letter acronyms (TLAs) to abbreviate common expressions. Some common ones are 'FYI' (for your information), 'BTW' (by-the-way), 'IMO' (in my opinion), 'WRT' (with respect to), 'NRN' (no reply necessary), 'TIA' (thanks in advance), and 'B4N' (bye for now).
Person-to-person communication provides visual and aural clues to your meaning through facial expressions, body language, or voice inflections. We have limited ways to imitate these techniques in e-mail messages using 'emoticons' or 'intensifiers'. Emoticons (or 'smileys') are faces (viewed sideways) that can be used within your messages to help convey feelings. The main ones are ':-)' to represent a smile, ':-(' to represent unhappiness and ';-)' to represent a wink.
Don't overdo them - too many smileys can be irritating. Intensifiers provide emphasis. These include **enclosing your words within asterisks** or USING UPPERCASE. Use uppercase with care - it's considered shouting on the net.
6. Organize.
Most e-mail programs provide a system for organizing and storing messages. Use it. Create separate folders for regular correspondence, projects, or groups you receive mail from regularly. Keep your inbox tidy so that it only contains messages needing action.
Create filters in your email program to automatically route messages from mailing lists into folders setup for those lists. This technique is useful for any category of mail you receive regularly.
Delete messages after they are no longer needed.
Purge sent messages periodically.
Check for new e-mail at least once per day and go through all your folders at least once per week.
Use an email program that allows automated retrieval of messages so that your service provider's system doesn't become clogged with a backlog of messages waiting for you to retrieve them.
7. Signatures and Addresses.
Make sure that you include your e-mail address in your message so that people can communicate with you. Most email programs have configuration options for both a "Sender's Address" and a "Reply-To" address. By default, replies are automatically addressed to "reply-to" address given in the message. However, in some forums, if the "reply-to" address is blank, the forum's address will be inserted automatically as the "reply-to" address. Review your address settings and make sure you have the appropriate settings for these options. Remember that messages from non-subscriber addresses may be rejected and not accepted for posting in the forum.
Many people include a "signature" at the end of their message. A signature is a small piece of text which provides contact information and sometimes a favorite saying. Signatures should be short, usually between 2 to 5 lines. For example:
+------------------------------------------------------+ | John Doe J_Doe@my.address.com | | P.O. Box 123, Anycity, USA Tel: 555-555-5555 | | http://my.service.com/Doe Fax: 555-555-5555 | +------------------------------------------------------+
Signatures greater than ten lines are considered annoying. If you frequently send messages to the forum, please use a short signature for the majority of the messages.
Note that a "signature" as used here is different from a "card" as mentioned in the policy statements above. Cards are normally sent as encoded (e.g. MIME) attachments while signatures such as the above example are simply text within the message.
8. Enjoy and help others enjoy!
Email and Genealogy should be enjoyable. If you aren't enjoying it, then stop and go do something else for a while. Don't make yourself or others unhappy doing something you aren't enjoying. Time is the stuff of which life is made. Spend it wisely.
If you have any suggestions for improvements to the Forum, please send them to the Forum Manager. Do not post them for public discussion in the forum.
Hope you find these suggestions useful!
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Copyright © 1998 S. J. Coker