|
Tallahassee Writers' Group
Listserve Guidelines
by Leland F. Raymond
TWA has a Discussion Group online. To join,
simply click on the "Yahoo! Groups" icon
above and follow the prompts. Belonging is a
good way to keep abreast of timely news
related to local (and worldwide) writers and
other organizations; often I receive contest
announcements or book-signing news the dates
of which will have passed by the time the
newsletter comes out.
Purpose of the Listserve:
The initial intent in starting the
Tallahassee Writers' Group Listserve was to
create a forum on the Internet not only for
members of TWA, but also for other writers
worldwide, to post news of interest to
writers; opportunities for writers; samples
of one's writing for critique; advice for
writers; announcements of your successes,
book-signings, appearances; in short,
virtually anything that one wished to post.
The hope is that everything posted will, in
some way, further the abilities of all list members to pursue writing as a craft.
Guidelines for Posting:
Since this is an unmoderated site (no
list "parent" monitoring of what
is posted),
there are no filters between posters and
respondents. There has always been an
unwritten expectation of common courtesy.
Thus, all list members have a right to expect
there will be no spamming (unsolicited
advertising of services) and no flaming
(unjustified personal attacks).
If you perform professional services of
value to writers on this Listserve (i.e.,
editing, book doctoring, typesetting,
proofreading, publishing, critiquing, or
agent service), you are allowed to offer free
advice as part of your posting to all
members of the Listserve, and you are allowed
to add your services as part of your
signature block (i.e., name, professional
organization, services, phone number,
mailing address, web site address, e-mail).
We ask that you keep your signature block
from crossing the line into spam.
Any list member or guest can post a question
or comment to other list members, and any
Listserve member or guest can reply to that post.
Everyone is free to agree or disagree. To
one degree or another, we are all writers,
and we all have our opinions. We welcome an
open exchange of ideas. If you choose to
post a message in disagreement with
something previously posted, we ask that you
keep your comments at the level of debate,
rather than a personal attack against the
original poster.
To summarize, anyone is free to post a
sample chapter for critique, and anyone is
free to post an invitation to visit a web
site to see what services you might provide
for writers. But no other list member is
obligated to provide a critique or to visit
the web site and purchase services. If a
Listserve member chooses to provide that critique,
so much the better for us all, especially if
the suggestions are offered to the Listserve
as a whole so that
we can all gain from the constructive
criticism. There are some other "rules" you
should be aware of in order to avoid
annoying the other list members.
The Listserve only accepts ASCII text, and it
will not accept attachments. For those who
like the pretty backgrounds and fonts that
HTML allows in e-mail messages, you should
be aware that whatever you post to the
Listserve will be removed; your message will
be posted, but there will be nothing in it.
In your e-mail program, select the option
that lets you customize how your e-mail is
sent; then select "send as plain text."
When you reply to something posted, you need
to first decide whether you want your reply
to go only to the original poster or to the
group as a whole. If you wish to reply only
to the original poster, you can just hit
your "Reply" button; your e-mail will go
only to that person. If you want your reply
to be posted to the Listserve for all to see,
click your "Reply to All" button, and your
e-mail will go to the whole Listserve.
One other item you should be aware of: This
is a free service provided through Yahoo!
Groups. To join, you must also sign up with
Yahoo! Groups. A little publicized aspect of
the "free" service is that Yahoo! shares the
list names and e-mail addresses with its
partner agencies, which in turn send you
advertisements. You need to specifically
(and I stress "specifically") uncheck the
box to refuse to have e-mail advertisements
sent to you.
|