I would suggest to Mr. McCollum and other new people (and veterans) that
they read not only any new list's FAQ, but also the "Welcome to..."
mailing you get when you subscribe, sometimes these issues are dealt
with there. I am afraid my current Museum-L welcome is at work and I am
not or I would reference it.  There are also numerous places to go to
familiarize yourself with "Netiquette" including listservs.  I found a
couple (listed below) this evening, but there are dozens of other sites
if not hundreds.


The Netiquette Home page maintained by Arlene Rinaldi at Florida
Atlantic University:
http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/netiquette.html

Spinner and Rayzer's Guide to Netiquette:
http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/class1/spinners/InternetSpeak/nettiquette.html


A rather patronizing, but certainly complete, guide is "Online Social
Graces for Newbies and Lazy Netizens"
http://www.theistudio.com/netiquette/

and The Netiquette Home page (I know ANOTHER one) at:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html

Unfortunately I noticed none of them have solutions to netiquette
problems.  For example in our recent thread the subject of large
attachments and files is clearly dealt with on a number of sites, but
they do not tell you what to do if you have a large file and want to
disseminate it.  In these cases I think we can all agree that we should
keep the list safe for simple questions and rules clarifications.  Every
netiquette piece I have ever read has a heading on being helpful and
polite to new people, "after all," most of them point out, "you were one once."

I don't thinking memorizing these sometimes verbose etiquette rules is
necessary, but we should all certainly keep them handy for reference.
We should all also read them regularly to remind ourselves that while
the internet is a revolutionary form of communication, email is still
just words on a page and is very limited in terms of conveying humor,
sarcasm, and other nuances of human communication.  Abiding by simple
standards of conduct, whether about posting large attachments or
civility, we can keep this list professional, pleasant, informative, but
more importantly, productive for museums, museum professionals, & the
entire museum profession.


I would also suggest _The Internet for Dummies_.  Not only does it have
helpful guidelines, but it also has a guide to emoticons; those little
faces you can make with punctuation.  My personal favorite is the
winking bearded man   ;)}

Matthew White
Director of Education
B&O Railroad Museum

Allan McCollum wrote:

> Dear Mr. White,
>
> Thank you so much for the advice and support. I've thought a lot about this
> (after all the fuss), and I'll never go the attchment route again. I am
> surprised to learn that people automatically download attachments without
> knowing what they are. This seems dangerous, considering the virus
> possibilities, not to mention a waste of computer network and internet time
> and bandwidth. But I hear now that subscribing to the listserve digest
> version doesn't allow one any other choice.
>
> I read the lists FAQ before I did it by the way, and there are no list rules
> regarding uploading or downloading attachments there. It would have helped if
> there were something there.... are you suggesting that there is a list of
> rules somewhere other than the FAQ? I would be happy to know where these
> are...
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Allan

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ museum-l.html. You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to
[log in to unmask] The body of the message should read "Signoff
Museum-L" (without the quotes).