Coblist Kahuna Rant - Long, But READ IT ANYWAY!!

[Shannon C. Dealy]

This may turn into a mild rant, if so, that's just to bad.  If you have
posted to the coblist in the last few months, then you in particular need
to read the following.  If you haven't posted, but think that you might
someday, then it wouldn't hurt to read this as well.  This message is NOT
in response to any one act by any particular individual, but rather in
response to a general pattern I have seen appearing in the postings.  Many
of you are doing just fine, and the point of this is to put the list back
on track and keep it useful.

The quality of the discussion on the coblist has deteriorated noticeably
in the last three months, and it is my intention to put an end to this
deterioration.  It may interest you to know that we have lost a good
number of people recently, and I can certainly understand why.  The
coblist since I first created it has climbed slowly but steadily in
membership until about 3 months ago when it peaked at over 260
people, it is now down to less then 220.  Every person on this list has
received a copy of my posting policies, some of you would do well to read
them again and I have included a copy of it after the end of this message.

The coblist was created as a forum for discussing cob.  I consider any
discussion which involves mixing earth (sand, clay & silt) with straw (or
straw like alternative materials) in order to build something (house,
furniture, ovens, fireplaces, etc.) to be appropriate.  I also consider
any discussion regarding issues directly related to the above to also be
appropriate, this would include: building codes as they relate (or fail to
relate) to cob, foundations for cob, roofs to go over cob, attaching cob
to straw bales, plastering with cob, etc..  In other words, the topic
should DIRECTLY relate to cob.  In addition to the above, I don't have any
real problems with the occasional posting of something like a bread recipe
to use with your new cob oven, or discussion of new building techniques
particularly if they are similar to or directly related to cob, but don't
let the discussion turn this into the bread recipe list, or the concrete
with straw rebar list, or whatever else may come up.  If it starts to get
off topic, then you need to take it off the list and discuss it privately
(see my posting policies below for the correct way to take a discussion
off list).

Now here are some specifics of things I have been seeing lately (see posting
policies below for why I have a problem with most of these):

   1 - DO NOT post "me to", "I agree", or "good going" type messages
       to the list.  Send them privately to the person who sent the
       message.

   2 - If someone is posting off topic and it bothers you, email them
       privately with your complaint, as your complaint is not relevant to
       cob either.

   3 - If someone complained to the list about you posting off topic,
       respond to them privately, your response to their complaint is not
       relevant to cob.  Responding to the list inevitably turns into a
       game of each person trying to prove they were right to the list.
       If you are unable to resolve it between yourselves, then email me
       directly with your problem.  I am the final authority on this
       list.

   4 - When responding to a previous message to the list, DELETE from your
       posting,  ALL of the previous message except for the two or three
       lines that you are actually responding to.

   5 - This is not the save the world list, if you wish to discuss world
       events, politics, saving the children, whatever, find a list
       dedicated to that topic.

   6 - This is not a social club.  This is not to say that you can't
       socialize by discussing your natural building interests and
       background, however, your religion, politics, national origins,
       etc. are generally not going to be relevant to cob, and if not then
       you shouldn't be sending it to the list.  If you want to socialize
       with someone from the list, that's great, send them a private email
       and have at it.

   7 - Keep the discussion on topic!  It is RUDE to post off topic to an
       email list.  Off topic posting is roughly equivalent to getting on
       the public address system where you work, and telling all your
       coworkers about the details of your hobbies.  It is (generally) not
       what the P.A. system is for, and it fails to consider whether or
       not any of your coworkers are interested in what you have to say on
       the subject.

   8 - Keep the discussion on topic! (In case you missed the previous one)

   9 - Periodically, different people have indicated that they can't reply
       privately to the person who sent a message to the list because
       their mail program does not show the person's email address.  In my
       experience this can usually be corrected by changing the
       configuration of the program you use to read your email i.e. read
       the manual for your mail program to see if you can fix this.  In
       some cases, it may be necessary to talk to your service provider to
       correct this problem.  The coblist always sends out each email with
       both a "From:" field which includes the email address of the person
       who originally sent the message, and a "Reply-To:" field which
       provides the address of the coblist.  If this continues to be a
       problem, I will change the list to make the default reply go to
       the person who sent the original message rather than to the list.
       I don't like this approach however, since it is counter to what I
       consider to be the logically correct way for replies to work, and
       I generally find it irritating to use.  You can help to minimize
       this problem by including your email address in the signature line
       of your messages.

  10 - If you have multiple email accounts and wish to be able to send
       email to the cob list from any of them, subscribe all of them to
       the list.  All non-member submissions to the list have to be
       reviewed by me for approval (otherwise the list would receive alot
       of junk email).  Membership in the list is determined by the email
       account that sends the message to subscribe to the list.  Due to
       the increased number of messages from email accounts that are not
       members of the list, I will in the very near future be setting up
       the system to simply bounce all of these messages back to the
       sender, thereby forcing you to re-send your message from the
       account that you used to subscribe to the cob list.

  11 - Before posting a question to the list, check the archives to see if
       it has already been discussed.  The old timers on the list should
       not have to listen to the exact same discussion multiple times just
       because you are to lazy to look it up.  The archives are available
       on the web at:

            http://www.deatech.com/natural/coblist/

I generally take a hands off approach to managing the list since it
usually takes more time than it is worth to me to explain to people that
I had a problem with their latest posting.  The fact that I don't send you
a private message does not however mean that I approve of your behavior.

If you are in doubt about posting something, the odds are that you
probably shouldn't do it.  If you really feel it needs to be said, but
still have doubts about posting it to the list, email me privately with
your concerns and I will give you my feelings on the subject.  Despite the
tone of this message, I don't (generally :-) bite.

If you feel these policies are to restrictive, I would suggest you join
the straw bale list (see www.crest.org to find info on the straw bale
list), since their discussion policies are pretty much wide open, and you
will get a better understanding of what I am trying to keep this list from
turning into.

If you have any comments, questions, etc. regarding this message, PLEASE
send them to me PRIVATELY, since they are not relevant to cob.  Please
note however, that while I read everything I receive; due to lack of time,
I generally only respond to messages which raise a specific point or
question for me to respond to.

End of Rant - Now everyone will probably be afraid to post for the next
month :-)

Shannon C. Dealy
dealy at deatech.com



All information about the coblist, including access to the archives and a
copy of the following list policy information is always available at:

    http://www.deatech.com/natural/coblist/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

POSTING POLICIES:
-----------------
The following list posting policy was extracted from an email I sent to
the list in order to clarify what constitutes appropriate behavior.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------

Basic list posting policy:

Do whatever you like until it irritates me, then I will tell you to do 
something else.  If you ignore me after being warned then I kick you off
the list.  Sorry if some of you want a more cut and dried answer, but
this is how I manage the list.  To date, I have not even had to issue a
warning (though I have made a few behind the scenes suggestions) and I
would prefer to keep it that way. If you wish to avoid irritating me, all
that is really necessary is to show consideration for others on the list
by considering ALL the consequences of your actions.  In order to aid
those of you who are newbies or who for whatever reason haven't picked up
on the basics of being a polite member of a mailing list, I will try to
spell out in gory detail what I mean by this and why.

How to be considerate when posting to a list:

1 - When responding to a posting by someone else, remove from your reply,
    all portions of their posting that you are not responding to, and
    make note of where the deletions occured using "[snip]" or a similar
    notation (see the top of this message for an example).  It may be
    necessary to have multiple "[snip]" marks if you are responding to
    several different points and interleaving your responses with their
    messages.  This is particularly important for people who subscribe
    to the digest version.

    WHY: Any portion of the message you are not responding to but still
    include in your reply is:

       a) Wasting space in the archives
       b) Costing money for list members in areas which still charge
          by the byte transfered or by the minute of connect time.
          Remember this is an international list, and internet access
          in many countries is much more expensive than it is in the
          U.S.A.
       c) Wasting the time of list members who end up reading this
          useless portion of your posting in order to get the context
          for reading your reply.

2 - Keep your postings on topic.  This does not mean you can't discuss
    anything other than the specific topic, but it does mean there should
    be a DIRECT connection with the list topic.  In other words, for
    the coblist it is appropriate to discuss any aspect of house building
    as it pertains to cob, as well as any other possible uses of cob.
    Examples of appropriate cob discussion would be:  Cob ovens, cob
    furniture, cob sculpture, how to make cob, plasters, foundations,
    floor systems, roofs, attaching cob to other materials such as
    strawbale, related earth building techniques such as rammed earth,
    design of buildings using a mix of techniques including cob, etc.
    Inappropriate postings would include how to feed the world, what is
    wrong with our government (except of course where it pertains to
    buildings, permits and approvals), and any other topic which does
    not pertain to creating buildings using earth and straw.

    WHY:  This is not what most members of the list signed up for, and
    while I certainly understand how easy it is to get off topic, the
    appropriate way to deal with the discussion is to take it off the
    list by privately sending email directly to those persons who have
    been involved in the off topic discussion.  One of the biggest
    problems with trying to get the discussion off of the list is that
    everyone wants to be the one to have the last word to the list and
    prove that they were right, rather than take it off the list and
    have those who don't participate in the follow up think they were
    wrong.  I understand this, it is only human nature and I suffer
    from this inclination like everyone else, but it is necessary
    to ignore your inclinations and do what is best for the list.
    In other words show consideration for others first and your ego
    second.

    If you want to make sure anyone who is interested in the discussion
    gets a chance to participate when you move it off list, send one
    final message on the subject to the list which contains no discussion
    of the topic (no fair trying to get the last word :-), but notifies
    everyone you are taking it off the list and that they should email
    you privately if they wish to discuss it further.

    It is particularly important to keep the discussion on topic for the
    following reasons:
       a) All of the reasons given for item one above
       b) If the list contains to many unrelated postings, then people
          who don't have time to read all of them will unsubscribe and
          they are often the most valuable contributors.  Putting a
          note in the subject line or top of the message that it is off
          topic doesn't help since it still takes time to determine that
          the message is not of interest and discard it.  You may think
          that this shouldn't be a problem because there aren't that many
          off topic messages on this list, but everyone on this list gets
          mail from other sources, including in many cases, several other
          lists, and the cumulative effect of all the unwanted postings
          mixed in with the desireable ones can consume a great deal of
          time.  One of the reasons I don't participate more in this
          list is lack of time, caused in part by the amount of email
          I have to deal with (sometimes as much as 1000 messages a
          week, thankfully it's usually closer to 100 messages per week).
          The strawbale list lost some of it's best contributors for
          this very reason, and if any of you have looked at the internet
          newsgroups lately, you will find that most of them have been
          abandoned to the advertisers because it takes to much time for
          people to find the useful postings in the mass of junk.
       c) Many of us (possibly most of us) have heard the whole debate
          on the current off topic subject before, regardless of what 
          the topic is.  The same off topic subjects come up over and
          over again within the same list, as well as on other lists.

3 - Don't include unnecessary or unuseable information in your postings.
    Examples of this would be:

    Don't include copies of pages from web sites, just provide the URL
    for the web page so those who are interested can go and get it.  It
    is however appropriate to collect information from a variety of web
    pages and condense it in order to provide a list of useful information.

    Messages to the list should be sent in plain text format, NOT HTML
    which some of you have on occasion sent though you may not realize
    you are doing it.  If you are using a web browser to read and send
    email, check your configuration to make sure it sends using plain
    text (sorry, I can't give you specific instructions).

    Refrain from attaching documents in other formats, convert it to 
    plain text first rather than making everyone else do the work for
    you.

    Don't attach pictures to your postings, put them on your personal
    web page and give people the URL in your posting.

    WHY:
       a) All of the reasons for item one above
       b) Not everyone uses a web browser to read their email, so if
          your mail contains HTML formating information, it makes it
          very hard to read.
       c) Not everyone has the facilities to convert documents you
          attach, so they cannot read your attached document.
       d) Many internet service providers have limits on the size of
          message that their customers can receive, as well as the
          amount of space allowed for storage of their unread messages.
          If you start attaching large objects like pictures, it may
          not even be possible for some members of the list to receive
          your message because of message size limitations.

Remember, whenever you post to this list you are sending your message to
people all over the world (currently about 160 people), each of them with
different interests, concerns, and technological capabilities in the form
of internet services, computers, and software.  Before sending a message
to the list, you should consider whether or not your posting is relevant
to the interest each of them has expressed by their signing up for this
list, and whether each member will be able to read or view all of the
information you send.

I am not trying to discourage anyone from posting to the list or even
telling you what to do with the current off topic discussion, but keep in
mind now that you have been made aware of some of the problems and issues 
with posting messages to an email list, anytime you fail to follow the
above guidelines, you are failing to show consideration for the other
members of the group.

Shannon Dealy
dealy at deatech.com
12/15/97