Welcome to GuineaPigs

This document contains important information regarding the GuineaPigs mailing list and it's policies. Please read it all the way through and then SAVE IT! If you don't have disk space for saving it, or don't know how, please print it out and store it someplace where it won't get lost. If you do not read this document completely, you may unknowingly violate the policies of this list and be unsubscribed by the List Owner.

Contents

Disclaimers

The GuineaPigs list owner is Sandi Ackerman, Sandi@HouseRabbit.org, and is referred to as the List Owner throughout this document. By subscribing to, participating in and reading messages from the GuineaPigs list, you agree that the List Owner is not responsible for opinions expressed on the list, and that these opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the list owner. Further, you recognize that the statements made by subscribers to the GuineaPigs list are not those of professional, qualified veterinarians (unless identified as such), and that these statements are not a substitute for qualified, veterinary care. You further agree that any information obtained through the GuineaPigs list should be checked with your veterinarian, and that it is your responsibility to do so before providing medical care for your guinea pig. If you choose not to consult with your veterinarian, then you agree that the List Owner and subscribers of this mailing list are not responsible for death, illness or injury caused to your guinea pig.

If you do not agree to these conditions, then you should unsubscribe now.

General List Information

The GuineaPigs mailing list is a mail forum for discussing the guinea pig, or cavy, as a companion animal. It focuses on behavior, care, medical needs and similar topics, and was established to:

  1. provide people with timely answers to emergency questions. There are a number of experienced guinea pig owners subscribed to the list who read their mail throughout the day. Questions of an emergency nature are often times replied to within a few hours.
  2. provide a formalized discussion of guinea pigs and their care, without burdening the list with chatty posts, stories and anecdotes. See the section on "Other Guinea Pig Mailing Lists" for mailing lists that provide a more generalized chat forum.
  3. exchange information and ideas on the behavior of guinea pigs. We are interested in helping our companion animals reach their potential life span of 8 - 10 years.
  4. discuss guinea pigs as companion animals only.

This list is not:

  1. a chat forum. In order to keep the volume of the mailing list manageable, we ask that posts of a chatty or informal nature be directed to the other guinea pig lists, outlined in this document.
  2. a forum for discussing breeding or showing guinea pigs. This does not mean that breeders and questions regarding the proper care of pregnant guinea pigs are unwelcome; rather, we discourage only the discussion of intentionally raising and breeding guinea pigs.
  3. a replacement for the Guinea Pigs' Daily Digest, or other mailing lists. In particular, we hope that GuineaPigs will be a supplement to the GPDD, which is only available in digest form. GuineaPigs can be received as a digest, but is available as individual messages received throughout the course of the day. This provides subscribers with the potential for immediate feedback to their postings and questions.

To post a message to the GuineaPigs list, address your mail to:

GuineaPigs@houserabbit.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe from the mailing list, send mail to:

request-gp@houserabbit.org

and put the desired line in the message body:

subscribe GuineaPigs

or

unsubscribe GuineaPigs

To contact the List Owner, send mail to:

listowner-gp@houserabbit.org

Acceptable Use

Because GuineaPigs has developed into a relatively high-traffic list, sometimes seeing as many as twenty posts in a single day, it is now a TOPIC based list. That means that you MUST use an approved topic in the subject line of your message. The use of these topic "tags" allow the readers of GuineaPigs to quickly scan new mail messages for postings of interest, and help flag emergency posts where immediate replies are needed. The approved topics are:

ADMIN

Administrative postings.  Use is restricted to the List Owner and other designated administrators.

BEHAVIOR

Posts covering all aspects of guinea pig behavior.

CARE

Postings relating to husbandry issues, such as appropriate bedding, housing, feeding and general grooming.

EMERGENCY

Posts of an emergency nature where immediate or timely replies are needed. When labeling your topic as an emergency, please make sure that this designation is appropriate. Note that an emergency need not be a life-threatening problem.

HEALTH

Health issues that fall outside of general care discussions, such as medical conditions and illness, nutrition and veterinary care.

RESCUE

Messages of particular interest to guinea pig rescuers and rescue organizations, as well as individuals looking to adopt a homeless guinea pig.

SPECIAL

Topics of a special nature which fall outside the scope of the other categories, such as news stories or special events of interest to the readership.

Messages sent to GuineaPigs without an approved topic in the subject line will be discarded. Subject lines should take the form:

TOPIC: Your post's subject

For example:

BEHAVIOR: Chirping

HEALTH: Ovarian cysts?

Capitalization is not essential, but it looks nice. The ordering and the colon, however, are required for a message to be accepted.

If your message does not "fit" one of the topics listed above, then it is very possible that your post does not fit within the GuineaPigs list's charter, and may be best sent to one of the other mailing lists outlined in this document.

Nettiquette

In order to maintain a pleasant atmosphere that encourages discussion, as well as minimize the volume and size of mail that is sent through GuineaPigs, please abide by the following guidelines:

  1. Remember that disagreement is not necessarily a flame. The nature of email based communications is such that what is intended, what is written and what is read can often times be three different messages. Unlike face-to-face conversation, there are no vocal or visual clues that we often times rely on to determine the speaker's mood or tone. Please write, and read, carefully.
  2. Outright inflammatory posts should be considered off-limits, and grounds for ejection from the list.
  3. Please be courteous when replying to another person's post. Abrupt and rude responses or language serve nobody's interests, and are unpleasant to read.
  4. Do not post the same message to multiple mailing lists. This often times leads to confusion on those lists, particularly if the threads diverge.
  5. Do not post questions to the list that can be answered by the List Owner. In particular, do not post to the list asking how to unsubscribe, change your list options, and so on.
  6. When replying to a post, please trim the original message to the minimum lines needed to provide the proper context for your response. In particular, don't quote a message in its entirety when responding.
  7. Refrain from sending attachments, such as images and sound files, to the list.
  8. Some mail programs can be configured to send both a plain text message and and HTML version. It is preferred that you disable this feature.

Other Guinea Pig Mailing Lists

Contacts