Cob: Re: Clarifying the off topic issue

[Shannon C. Dealy]

Let me start by saying that the policies on off topic posting are NOT
going to change, if it isn't about cob or closely related earthen building
techniques, it probably doesn't belong on the list, that includes this
thread on how people would like to allow off topic postings in various
ways!

I would like to reiterate one item from the list policies that all of you
received:

   "This list is not a democracy, it is a (mostly :-) benevolent
   dictatorship.  If you don't like the policies of the list, send a
   private message to owner-coblist at deatech.com to voice your concerns,
   not to the list."

this means that if you don't like my policies on off topic posting, don't
send it to the list, no one on this list other than me has any say in the
posting policies, and if you irritate me enough by posting off topic to
the list, I can and will remove you from the list.

While many of you might like to believe that simply flagging your message
as off topic is an adequate solution, IT IS NOT.  I have been a member of
dozens of lists over the last 17 years with all sorts of different
posting policies, and this particular approach does not work, all it does
is encourage off topic posting by progressively larger numbers of people
to the point where on one list I was a member of, I was receiving
sometimes as many as 100-200 off topic postings a day, and that list only
had about 600 people on it.  It takes alot of time just to read all the
subject header lines, many if not most people forget to flag the message
as off topic, and often simply reply to a previous, unrelated message,
leaving the subject line set to the one for that message.  If you don't
believe me, you might try looking at the subject headers and message
content on the coblist for the last few weeks, in many cases they have
nothing to do with each other.

As far as things like satellite internet, life style issues, etc. being
related to cob, THEY ARE NOT.  I am not saying that they are not relevant
to many members of this list (myself included), but they are not what this
list is about, though most likely there are other lists on the internet
that cover these topics, and if someone wants to track some of them down
and post to the coblist the locations of the home pages for these lists,
please do so.

For those of you who still think that I am wrong to take this hard line
approach, it might interest you to know that I have had private feed back
from dozens of list members over the years thanking me for keeping things
on topic, while I have had very few people complain and ask that I allow
broader discussion.  In other words, it is quite likely that yours is the
minority opinion.

Once again, included below are the list policies (including posting
policies), if you don't think you can abide by them, please don't post to
the coblist.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com

===========================================================================

PLEASE READ ALL OF THIS MESSAGE, BY POSTING TO THIS LIST YOU ARE ACCEPTING
RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR BEHAVIOR, AND IT'S CONSEQUENCES!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I know it is rather long, but it will make your life and mine simpler, and
improve the quality of the "coblist" discussion group.

The tone of the following may seem hostile, but it is not intended that way.
Rather think of this as a somewhat forceful set of warnings, concerns, etc.
that have been to often ignored by people with their very first posting
five minutes after joining the list, and even more often ignored by people who
should know better that have been on the list for years.

1 - This list is an open forum and all messages to the list are PUBLICLY
    posted on the web.  Spammers often will search the web for email addresses
    to send junk email to, and if you send a message to this list, eventually
    they will find your email address.  If you join this list and do not
    send messages to it, you should be safe.  By sending a message to the
    list you are giving permission for your message, it's content and
    your email address to be posted on our web site.  If you wish to
    avoid this problem, many people opt to use free email accounts
    from one of the many providers on the net, which can be discarded at
    any time once spam becomes to much of a problem.

2 - This list is not a democracy, it is a (mostly :-) benevolent dictatorship.
    If you don't like the policies of the list, send a private message to
    owner-coblist at deatech.com to voice your concerns, not to the list.
    On occasion I have made adjustments in the list policies where I
    felt the person's concerns were valid, but none of the policies were
    created in a vacuum, they are the result of hard learned lessons and
    are not likely to change.

3 - If your email address is on either msn.com or hotmail.com, expect to miss
    messages on a regular basis.  Due to incompetent administration, both
    of these mail services periodically bounce all incoming email back to their
    sender, which ultimately results in them being routed to me.  I have neither
    the time nor the inclination to resend all these messages.

4 - Other service providers occasionally bounce messages, if you think
    you have missed a message, check the archives.

5 - PURPOSE OF THIS LIST
    --------------------
    This list is intended for the discussion of Cob construction and related
    alternative building technologies.  Cob is a technique which uses earth
    (clay and sand) mixed with straw and water to build walls, floors, and
    a wide variety of other items including book shelves and fireplaces.

    Cob was historically used in England and there are a number of cob buildings
    still standing, some of them are over 400 years old.

    Additional information on cob, including pictures and a schedule of cob
    construction workshops are available on the Cob Cottage Company web site:
    "http://www.deatech.com/cobcottage".

6 - Email for the list should be sent to "coblist at deatech.com"

7 - ARCHIVES OF PREVIOUS POSTINGS
    -----------------------------
    It is HIGHLY recommended that you read at least the first three to four
    months of the coblist archives, since they answer virtually all of the most
    common questions.  To access the archives, just follow these instructions.
    To get a copy of past discussion on this list, you can access the archives
    directly from the web using links in:

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

    you can access individual messages as well as digests, and monthly
    archives and follow threads with your browser.

8 - Due to the large number of service providers who do not appear to be able
    to correctly administer their mail systems, I have been forced to adopt
    a policy of unsubscribing anyone whose email has been bounced as
    undeliverable by their service provider for more than one week.  Many
    service providers give you only limited storage for incoming email, if
    you exceed that limit, they will start bouncing your messages, in which
    case, you may get unsubscribed after a week.  You are welcome to resubscribe
    at any time, the removal is just to put an end to bounced messages and
    nothing against you personally.

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9 - POSTING POLICIES:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.  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.

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 occurred using "[snip]" or a similar
    notation.  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.
       d) Makes it more likely your message will cause peoples email
          boxes to overflow so that they miss your message or others
          that follow.

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 or other fiber.

    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 desirable 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 unusable 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.

4 - Viruses and other warnings - it doesn't matter how dire the warning,
    or how reliable the source, virtually all virus warnings passed around
    the internet are hoaxes, and even for those that aren't, the coblist
    is not an appropriate place to post them.  If you think that your
    computer sent a virus to the coblist, or that you have received a virus
    from the list, please send a message to: owner-coblist at deatech.com
    NOT the list.  I will take any appropriate actions.

Remember, whenever you post to this list you are sending your message to
people all over the world (currently about 500 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, 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
Updated March 11, 2002