KRNetiquette

We have a few folks who feel compelled to comment on just about every post made, and I can only be thankful that all 650 of us don't do that, or we'd be wading through several thousand emails a day! Please be considerate of your fellow KRNetHeads. A few of us would do well to heed the following advice.

1) When replying to a post, delete everything except one or two key sentences from the previous post. It's really ridiculous to have to search thru 3 or 4 pages of stuff to find down at the bottom where some clown wrote "me too". Carrying all that useless baggage around from previous posts also gives people fits when searching the archives later, as they end up getting 10 hits for the same message.

2} Conversely, at least put SOMETHING in the post to remind us what you're replying to. A post like "yeah, that's how I did mine and it works great" doesn't mean a thing if you don't know what the guy's talking about, so please cut and paste some of what you're replying to above your comments.

3) Carefully consider whether or not you need to reply to a post. Saying "me too", or "I don't know" doesn't contribute to the thread, it just makes the list more bothersome. If you don't know what you're talking about, maybe you should be listening, rather than talking. There are FEW people who know everything about everything. Try to stick to things you KNOW about, and let others answer the rest.

4) Try to write "keeper" posts if you're the expert on something. Cover the whole issue, answer all possible questions, address both sides of an issue, and make it a post that others will want to save or print out and keep. Those are the gems that we all search for on KRNet.

5) Put your email address in your signature to make emailing others "offnet" easier. If we all had our addresses at the bottom of our posts, it would be far easier to "email direct". If it's blue just click on it, if it's not, cut it and paste it into the "To" box.

6) If you don't have anything subtantial to say, please don't post anything. This is a KR list, and as such, really needs to stay focused on KRs, or at least airplanes. With over 650 people on the list, if we all decided to say something every day we'd have a real problem. Ask yourself "do 650 people really need to see this, or are 650 people going to be annoyed by this?" Personally, my time is pretty precious to me, and I hate to waste it reading inane email. And is it something that you could find somewhere else?

7) Don't send enclosed files directly to the list. Either post it to a web site or get someone else to post it so others can see if they want, but don't have to if they don't. Also, enclosures are famous for carrying viruses, which we could all do without. I usually delete messages with enclosures immediately, unless I'm expecting something from that person. I don't have two days to rebuild my computer "for fun". And by all means, arm yourself with an anti-virus program such as Norton Antivirus or McAfee Antivirus. There are even FREE antivirus programs out there. GET ONE!

8) If you have something you want to share, specify that you want replies to go offline. It's nice to say "hey, I've got the holy grail on thingamajigs, anybody want it?", but when 15 people reply online that they want it it gets kinda painful wading thru all of those posts for nothing. A gentle reminder to "reply offline" and furnishing your email address will be a big help.

9) Do not advertise commercial products to this list. It's OK to let folks know there's a new service or a new business, but point them to web site. We don't need a bunch of advertising here. Personal testimonials as to a product's usefullness are welcome anytime, as long as it's not YOUR product. Advertising and selling KRs or KR parts IS permissible anytime, however.

10) Try not to take things personally. We're all here to help each other. There are usually several ways to take comments. Always try to pick the "nicest" interpretation, rather than trying to read animousity into a post. It's a lot easier to just ignore a snide comment and let it slide. Try to avoid "having the last word".

11) It's OK to interject some personality into emails, just make a contribution while you're at it. I like to let other KRNetters know who I am and what my interests are, but I try to tack that sort of stuff to the bottom of a post in which I've made some sort of contribution to the cause.

12) Keep personal stuff offline. Finding that some other KRNetter is from your neck of the woods isn't a good enough reason to bother us all with your efforts to strike up an acquantance. Email him direct, rather than to the list.

13) Do not forward "chain mail" or ANYTHING that urges the sender to "send this to everyone in your address book", or "forward to all your friends". These are almost always either hoaxes, viruses, or just plain don't have any place on KRnet. This includes messages dealing with politics, nationalism, or religion. There are plenty of email lists where you can flood your email inbox with warm, touchy-feely messages from the heart. KRNet is NOT going to become one of them!

14) Change the subject if the thread starts to deviate from the original intent. This makes searching the archive much more productive and far less time-consuming for future builders who are in search of information.

15) Those who violate these suggestions may find themselves wondering why they don't get KRNet mail anymore. I reserve the right to throw anybody overboard that I see fit...

Mark Langford, KRnet administrator

Mylist.com's "mailman" software has certain features set up as defaults, including one that will suspend email to a list subscriber if it starts getting "undeliverable mail" messages returned. If it gets a certain number of those within a specific amount of time, it will suspend that email address for a while in order to give the problem a chance to get cleared up. It will send several messages over the period of a week notifying the subscriber that his subscription has been disabled, and that he needs to go to visit http://mylist.net/listinfo/krnet to re-enable his subscription. If the situation persists, the system will automatically unsubscribe the guy, and if that's the case, he may be unsubscribed and will never have gotten the message telling him that he's been thrown off the list. In that case, your first clue is that you haven't gotten email from KRnet for several days. When you figure that out, just go re-subscribe. No biggie. But take the situation as a clue that your ISP (not necessarily AOL) is a little flaky around the edges and has a tendency to go up and down, and occasionally cannot be found to deliver mail to. I've seen 30 AOL users be unsubscribed at the same time due to undeliverable mail problems.

Another problem is the "mail controls" that allow the user to block messages from certain senders. It's all too easy to select a bunch of spam and accidently include a message from another KRNet subscriber. After you do that, every message that the other guy sends to the group will generate a message that looks like: "Your mail to the following recipients could not be delivered because they are not accepting mail from somebodyoranother@somewhere.com ", with some AOL member's handle underneath. The problem with these is that first of all, you no longer get messages from the guy and don't even know it, AND everytime this happens, the system sends ME a message that the mail didn't go through because you screwed up and added a KRNetter to your blocked sender list! This gets really painful after you've gotten about 20 of these in a day! So once you've done it, how do you fix it? See below...

To access AOL's "mail controls", click on the blue "MAIL" header to pop down the menu shown here, and choose "MAIL CONTROLS". The following box will appear. Next click on "People and Places" to get the screen shown below.

Once here, you can see what choices you've made, and a list is displayed of the people who you've blocked. Simply find the guy that you've blocked, and remove his name from the list, and don't let it happen again!!!

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