Follow these guidelines when participating in the Lawhead Mailing List

Right to Intellectual Property (copyrights, trademarks, etc)

This is a literature-based discussion list. To fully appreciate an author and his works, we must respect his and his publisher's ownership rights to copy and distribute the works. Quoting small portions in the course of discussion is perfectly valid. However, quoting an entire magazine article or chapter from a book (or an entire book, but I would hope no one would try to fill our e-mail boxes with something that big) is extending beyond fair use.

Further, we should respect other list members' intellectual property rights as well. Posts to the list or private e-mails are still the intellectual property of the author; further distribution or publishing of such messages should not occur without the consent (implied or explicit) of the author. That is, a post to the entire list should be considered fair game for archiving and passing on to a few other people who might be interested, but forwarding it to another mailing list without permission is stretching things; forwarding a private e-mail from someone else to this list or any other list without their express permission is rude, and, as far as this list is concerned, not allowed.

Quoting

Quote what you're going to use in your reply. There's no need to quote EVERYTHING unless you're going to talk about EVERYTHING. The list has had opportunity to read the entirety of any particular post (if nothing else, a member can check the archives). Just quote the portions to which you are replying. If you don't know how to edit a message so that only relevant portions of the discussion -- e-mail me privately with what mail reader, what OS, and other sorts of things like that you're using, and I'll try to help you through it.

As an example of the preferred quoting arrangement:

| Someone wrote:
| >Here is a bunch of text by Someone, that was originally a 25 line
| >paragraph, but [snip irrelevant portion]
|
| Now you, as the author, respond to those points, right here.
| If you have more to quote, do so:
|
| >Someone still had a couple more points to which you wanted to
| >reply, so you quote them [but still snip unneded stuff]
|
| and respond to it.
|
| Your sig then typically follows (but DON'T quote Someone's sig,
| unless that is what you are responding to... and if so, you'd better
| make sure that it is relevant to a Lawhead mailing list, or that it
| is a miniscule fraction of your otherwise completely on-topic post.)

Me too posts

A post who's entire purpose is to state simple agreement really doesn't add a whole lot. If you expound on _why_ you agree, go ahead and post. This includes most one liner posts: "Me Too", "I agree" "okay"...

Private posts vs. Public posts

If it's only addressing one person - send it to just that person. The entire list really doesn't need to hear your one on one conversation. [I admit, even I get drawn into these sometimes, such as the whole trumpet/flute/bradley/ISU thread]

Debate

Debating opinions, ideas, and interpretations found in and made about Lawhead's work is perfectly legal for this list. When you state an opinion, idea, or interpretation, you can expect that not everyone on the list will agree with you and that one or more people could very well offer differing interpretations, often along with facts or more opinions/ideas/interpretations to support them. Most often, such rebuttals are not meant as personal attacks. However, if at any point, you feel attacked or offended by someone else, e-mail them privately to let them know. If the attacks continue, or if they are from a large portion of the list, privately e-mail me (petercj AT aracnet.com), and I will attempt to address the situation. [E-mail me even if -- and especially if -- I am one of the offending people. I will do my best to respond appropriately to the situation.]

Asking and answering questions

Read through your mail first - if someone else has already answered a question - there's really no point in your answering with the same material except to take up space in another person's email box.

When asking a question - take a look and see if it's been asked already that day.

Also, read the FAQ.

General good idea rule is to read your mail first, then post.

Forwarding mail

Chain letters, spam mail - just don't bother sending it. If it says "send this to all your e-mail friends", it's a chain letter. If it specifically says "this is not a chain letter", or "this is a legal marketing method, since we are providing a service", or "it was so-and-so's dying wish to have this chain letter", or "we'll pay 3 cents into <some good-will charity fund> for every person to whom you e-mail this message" -- if it says any of those things, the chances are, the message is lying to you.

* VIRUS WARNING's -- "Don't open e-mail with the Subject 'GOOD TIMES' / 'JOIN THE CREW' / etc" -- are, in general, false. Check the CIAC web site at <URL:http://www.ciac.org/ciac/>, which contains quite a bit of good info about these things... (Especially the Chain Letters and Hoaxes pages.) Also, Symantec (the makers of Norton AntiVirus) have their Virus Hoaxes page with a list of fake virus warnings at <URL:http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html>.

* Most ISP's forbid these anyway. But this is a reminder.

* Don't send them.

Attachments, posting in <HTML><FONT SIZE=+100000>markup</FONT></HTML>, etc

Just don't do it. Period. It clogs mailboxes. Many people's mail program cannot correctly read the attachment, or doesn't convert HTML.

High-bit/Fancy characters

Accented letters, special symbols, fancy quotemarks, etc, should be avoided when possible: various mail-readers interpret them differently, and sometimes they do strange things and obscure the message. For example, the "á" (a-acute, "a'") [*] character: depending on which method I read a message containing the character, it appeared as "^!", "<E1>", and the actual a-acute character, depending on which method with which I read the message.

For the sake of understandability of your message, try to find an alternate: use the non-accented version (eg, "a" rather than "á"), use the 7-bit ascii two-character equivalent ("a'"), or, if you simply must use the high-bit character, provide a translation table at the end of your message ("á=a-acute=a'", "à=a-grave=a`").

[*] Even on the web, not all browsers will be able to display the &aacute;-encoded a-acute corrctly;

Full Mailboxes

Try to keep your mailboxes somewhat empty. When your mailbox is full, the message bounces back to me (clogging up _my_ mailbox), and you never get the message. (AOL accounts are notorious for getting full rather easily; over 90% of the messages that bounce on this list because of full mailboxes are destined to people on AOL.)

E-mail address

When you join the list, you are listed under ONE e-mail address. The list will not accept e-mail from any of your other accounts. If, for example, you usually email from petercj@somewhere.my.example, it will not accept e-mail from petercj@nowhere.my.example or from peter_c_jones@someplace.else.example.

Respecting others' beliefs

This list comprises people of many different denominations, faiths, and levels of maturity in their faith. We are not here to judge or argue about such things as "you must be (cannot be) a Catholic (protestant, charismatic, etc etc etc) to be a Christian". There are other forums for that. If you feel like debating an issue like that, do it somewhere else.

Spoiler warnings

When a new book comes out, not everyone works in a bookstore and gets a copy the first day. In fact, some people (for whatever reason) wait until a book comes out in paperback to buy it and read it. For that reason, please give indication that there are plot spoilers (telling the end of a book, giving away a major plotpoint, etc) ahead, and leave some blank space (25 lines is sufficient) so that people won't accidentally read a message. Also, don't give a spoiler in the subject line. ("Frodo gets killed", might be considered a spoiler for a particular book, if one knew who frodo was, and thought he was not going to die.)

Given that not everyone reads every book by an author, there is the possibility for spoiling older books as well. But since this list is primarily for discussing Lawhead's books, it would use a lot of space to put spoiler protection in _every_ post. Therefore, the general guideline for this list is that if it's one of the last two or three books published, it would be nice to give spoiler warnings.

Accurate subject lines

If the topic of discussion changes, please change the Subject line to keep a somewhat accurate description of what's going on. It's especially helpful when someone grabs the archives.

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