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).