Hi Dale

Thanks for taking over the policing role.  Thanks for sections 3 and 4.
This list should not be used for political and religeous discussion which
creates very strong emotions and opinions.  Personal attacks are degrading
to all of us.

James thanks for the excellent work you have done for us all.  PICLIST is
good for us all.  Let all of us participate to the benefit of each other.

Thanks

Frank Adlam
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
Port Elizabeth Technikon
Port Elizabeth
South Africa

-----Original Message-----
From: Dale Botkin [mailto:dale@BOTKIN.ORG]
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 9:42 AM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [ADMIN]: List policies


With James' departure from the list, as disturbing as it is, I have
volunteered to take over the "list cop" role.  I have fairly thick skin and
an unlisted home address...  8-)

We've lost James and several other members in the past few days, and there
has been a lot of disagreement and sniping.  This is very disturbing.  I
think James made the right choice in allowing a wider latitude in the OT
posts after the terrorist attacks, but it's clearly gone way too far.  We
need to apply a clamp to stop the bleeding.  So here are a few things we're
going to change, effective immediately, in the interest of getting things a
bit more on track.

1.) Topic tags remain, at least for the time being.

2.) It's been long enough since the WTC and Pentagon attacks it is no longer
appropriate for discussion on the list.  Neither is world history, history
of warfare, and most of the rest of what has been posted with the [OT] tag
in the past three days or so.  If you feel compelled to continue discussing
some thread that is currently running, please do so privately or on some
more appropriate list or newsgroup.

3.) OT is for non-PIC related posts that don't fit EE, but are still more or
less list related - including personal notes, the *occasional* joke, etc.
Politics and religion, with the sole exception of holiday greetings and
similar one-timers, are expressly verboten.

4.) If you have a problem with something someone posts, reply off list. If
you are just sick of hearing from someone, learn how to filter their posts
out.  I don't care how you do it, but refrain from personal or individual
criticism on the list.  "Praise in public, criticize in private".

I am confident that everyone will be able to see the reasoning behind these
policies.  If anyone doesn't you can email me privately; though I cannot
guarantee an individual response I'll try, depending on how many emails I
get.  Don't complain to the list.

I think at some future time we may want to take a vote on whether to keep
the topic tags, or eliminate them along with ANY postings not directly PIC
related.  Then again I didn't start the list, so it's not my call, just a
suggestion.  I'll defer to the list owner on that one.  In the mean time,
maybe we can clean things up enough to lure a few people back to the list.

Dale
--
Hallo, this is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Leennuks. Hallo, this
is Bill Gates and I pronounce 'crap' as 'Windows'.

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