Subject: Usage guidelines for THYROID
W E L C O M E !
Guide For Membership In The Thyroid Discussion Group
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Last Updated: 22 February 1997
To have a new copy of this file e-mailed to you: send e-mail
that says
get Thyroid welcome
to the automated administrative robot at
[log in to unmask]
This file is also posted monthly to the Thyroid discussion mailing list.
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Welcome Contents:
1. Please Keep On Topic
2. This Discussion is NOT Medical Advice
3. Be Brief and Use a Descriptive Subject: Line
4. Avoid Meta Comments - Use Private E-mail
5. Don't Post On/Off Requests to the Whole List
6. Please Be Respectful and Tolerant
7. Commercial Postings are Tightly Controlled
8. Fraudulent, Deceptive, Illegal and/or Disruptive Messages Prohibited
9. Your Privacy Is Lost When You Post a Message
10. The Decision of the Judge Is Final
11. Please Respect Copyrights
12. How to Search the Thyroid Archives (Temporarily Unavailable)
13. Short Instructions on LISTSERV SET Options
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Guide For Membership In The Thyroid Discussion Group
The Thyroid discussion mailing list is an open, unmoderated,
free LISTSERV discussion list. The Thyroid mailing list is
seeking additional sponsors, and will accept pre-approved
commercial announcements *strictly* related to thyroid
conditions and diseases. All commercial announcements must be
screened, approved in advance, and actually posted by the list
owner at <[log in to unmask]>.
World Wide Web users will want to visit the Thyroid mailing
list home page at:
http://www.Emissary.Net/thyroid
Purpose of Thyroid Discussion:
1. Please Keep On Topic
Our topic is thyroid conditions and diseases of all
types - how they influence our health and lifestyles,
treatments for thyroid conditions from the consumer perspective
and experience, thyroid self-care, support systems, and basic
facts about these topics. Occasionally, the discussion touches
on related conditions and complications such as Basedow's
disease, Flajani's disease, goiter, Grave's disease,
Hashimoto's disease, hypothyroid, hyperthyroid, myxedema,
Parry's disease, struma, thyroiditis, thyroid nodules, Wilson's
syndrome, etc. These associated topics are fair game,
especially as they relate to people dealing with thyroid
conditions in their everyday lives. Family and friends of
those with thyroid disease/conditions are also welcome.
If someone else starts a discussion or asks an
interesting question that is *not* about thyroid conditions,
please do NOT reply on the list. No matter how much you want
to respond on the list, please remember that all non-Thyroid
discussions are to occur in private e-mail. This mailing list
is about Thyroid disease/conditions only, please.
Please do not send personal notes to the Thyroid list
unless they are about thyroid and might contribute to the
discussion. Posters in the "Hi Joe, how was your weekend?"
vein will be reminded about the Thyroid signal-to-noise ratio.
Surveys and questionnaires directed to the Thyroid
membership must be pre-approved and posted by the mailing list
owner at <[log in to unmask]>. Surveys and
questionnaires may not be posted by anyone other than the
Thyroid mailing list owner.
You may always introduce new thyroid-related topics.
If the thyroid-related topic you want to hear about is not
currently being discussed on the Thyroid mailing list -- please
bring your topic up in a question or statement to the group!
If you wish to remain anonymous, or if you are unsure about
whether the topic is sufficiently thyroid-related, please feel
free to send your message to me at <[log in to unmask]>.
Please be sure that you make it quite clear if your message is
intended for the Thyroid mailing list (rather than personal
mail to me alone.) If I understand that you intend the message
for distribution, I can distribute the message to the Thyroid
mailing list, but your message may no longer appear to come
from you.
2. This Discussion Is NOT Medical Advice
The Thyroid discussion is not a source or kind of
personal medical advice. This electronic LISTSERV discussion
cannot substitute for proper health care or timely consultation
with your health care providers. I hope that the discussion
will help you be more informed about Thyroid conditions and
help inform your health care choices. The Thyroid discussion
is only intended for informational purposes and should not be
construed as medical advice or medical instruction, because it
is *not* medical advice or medical instruction.
This electronic, textual discussion cannot diagnose or
treat an illness or condition, and is not intended to provide
personal medical advice, which should be obtained directly from
your health care provider. When you need personal medical
advice and/or treatment of a problem or condition or for any
other medical purpose, please consult with or visit a health
care provider of your choice without delay.
Sometimes Thyroid subscribers write their posts in a
medical "sounding" way. Please do not be confused. You are
not receiving personal medical advice from this LISTSERV
mailing list, regardless of the apparent credentials of the
members of the mailing list. What you can expect to find is a
wide-ranging, mostly non-technical discussion of all aspects of
Thyroid, with human warmth and the voice of human experience
thrown in for good measure.
If you use any information gained from the Thyroid
mailing list, you use it only at your own risk. The Thyroid
list is offered "as is" with no warranty of any kind. The
LISTSERV owner specifically denies any responsibility for the
accuracy, quality, or applicability for any particular purpose
of any and all information obtained through the Thyroid mailing
list. Use at your own risk, and only after appropriate
consultation with your health care provider, please.
3. Be Brief and Use a Descriptive Subject: Line
Please do not include the entire previous message you are
replying to. Only quote as much as is needed to be coherent
and give the rest of us an idea of what you are responding to.
You should never send a quote of the previous Thyroid
discussion with a comment that is smaller than the quote.
Please add more to the discussion than you are repeating or
repeat less.
Please use a Subject: header that is very clear.
Try to keep exceptionally long or frequent posting to a
minimum. Consider whether your message might be better sent
privately. Please read all the incoming mail from the list
before posting - someone else may have already sent a message
just like yours.
Please don't distract other subscribers and waste network
bandwidth by posting non-Thyroid chatter to the list. Please
use private, personal e-mail instead.
Do add your name and a return address to the body of
every message. But signatures should be only 4 lines or less,
longer ones fill up the digest unnecessarily and cost some
subscribers extra. Many people, especially overseas, pay for
their Internet access by the line.
You can expect to receive 5 to 10 or more messages per
day from this mailing list. At the end of this file there is
information about how to receive only one Digest (or Index)
daily.
4. Avoid Meta Comments - Use Private E-mail
Meta comments are posts about the Thyroid discussion
group or the people in it, rather than about Thyroid. Posts
such as: "I think this mailing list is...." "Why do people on
this list...." "This mailing list is too X" "this mailing list
is not X enough" are off limits here. Please don't discuss the
discussion - do discuss Thyroid!
If you have questions or suggestions about the Thyroid
list itself, please share them with the list owner at
<[log in to unmask]>, but do not post them to the
entire list. The topic of this discussion is Thyroid! But the
owner is interested in anything that can improve the list and
discussion. Please do not comment (good or bad) to the list
about the Thyroid list owner or the list owner's actions.
These are topics for private e-mail.
The only topic allowed for general discussion is Thyroid.
Private e-mail is the place for all <non-Thyroid> messages,
please.
5. Don't Post On/Off Requests to the Whole List
Posting "unsubscribe me" to the whole list
<[log in to unmask]> will not get you off the list
because it is automated. If you want off, send your request to
<[log in to unmask]>. Use the following command:
unsubscribe Thyroid
All clerical, subscription-related issues should be
handled at the <[log in to unmask]> address, NOT the
address for the people who read the Thyroid list
<[log in to unmask]>.
6. Please Be Respectful and Tolerant
We're a diverse, worldwide group of people. Our emphasis
is on sharing information. Flaming and personal insults
(including name calling, rude comments and other bad manners)
are out of place here. Repeat offenders will be banned.
The Thyroid discussion mailing list is an open forum for
ideas about Thyroid conditions and diseases. I expect ideas
about Thyroid to occasionally cause controversy and evoke
emotions among the Thyroid members. Please feel free to
vigorously defend or attack ideas on this mailing list. BUT,
you may *not* make personal attacks on other living beings (or
groups of living beings) on the Thyroid list. Whether a person
is a member of the discussion or not, all human beings should
be treated with respect and tolerance on the Thyroid discussion
list.
If you have a dispute with any list member, please try to
solve it privately, off-list. If that doesn't work, then both
sides should send brief comments to the list owner, who will
then try to find a solution. If one side is disrespectful or
intolerant, this is NOT an acceptable excuse to return that
disrespect or intolerance.
7. Commercial Postings are Tightly Controlled
****************************************************************
Definition: A commercial posting is one made by a person or on
behalf of a person or organization selling or profiting or
benefiting from sales of a product or service and containing
information about that product or service.
****************************************************************
To promote fairness, people with commercial interests in
thyroid-related products and services also may not speak about
competitor products or services unless it is in a message
clearly identified as an advertisement.
Please consider this policy experimental. I want to find
a way to keep the Thyroid information level high without
prohibiting *all* paid commercial messages. I intend to
experiment with ways to allow some **relevant** advertising,
while demanding that it not overpower or distract the
discussion which is the purpose of the list. I intend to
solicit sponsors for the list, and hope to find ways that the
list can pay its own way, so to speak.
Commercial postings may not be posted directly to the
list. Only the Thyroid mailing list "owner" may post
commercial messages. Nobody else is authorized to post
advertisements except the Thyroid list owner. Every commercial
posting must be paid for in advance and preapproved by the list
owner. Send your request to <[log in to unmask]> for
approval. [This rule does not apply to unaffiliated, unrelated
consumers making unsolicited, unrecompensed recommendations or
reviews of products and/or services.]
ALL postings must have specific relevance to the Thyroid
list. Commercial posts should take the form of "X is a new
product with Y benefits; e-mail me for more thyroid-related
information." Announcements of seminars and educational events
where products (vitamins, etc.) are sold also require
preapproval. Again, this rule does not apply to unaffiliated,
unrelated consumers making unsolicited, unrecompensed
recommendations or reviews of products and/or services.
Postings in violation of this policy will be removed from
the archived log files and warned only once, if at all.
Until further notice commercial posts will be limited to
Tuesday mornings. I'll try to keep them to one Tuesday a
month, unless the post has a time urgency that would make it
stale by the next monthly posting.
8. Fraudulent, Deceptive, Illegal and/or Disruptive Messages Prohibited
Forging messages or otherwise creating a deception in
e-mail messages or addresses is an offense to the community and
is not tolerated. Anonymous posting through a blind third
party remailer is tolerated as a courtesy, but identity hacking
or other deception of any kind is not allowed.
The Thyroid mailing list forbids identity deception of
any kind, but makes no assurances that a particular message was
sent by the person it appears to be from. I cannot verify the
identity or credentials of Thyroid members. Therefore I remind
you that before trying out any ideas discussed here you should
seek advice and confirmation from qualified, licensed health
care providers whose identities and credentials you know and
trust.
Fraudulent and illegal activities are forbidden from the
Thyroid mailing list. No disruption, or attempted disruption
of the Thyroid discussion is permitted.
9. Your Privacy Is Lost When You Post a Message
I do not release the names and e-mail addresses of the
Thyroid membership. If I am presented with a valid court order
I will release them only under protest. I believe the other
technical people who can access the list to be scrupulous and
ethical, and I believe they will not divulge the addresses
without being similarly forced.
However, when *you* post a message to the Thyroid
discussion, you breech your privacy because all the Thyroid
members can read your return address. Because the Thyroid
mailing list is open to anyone, the Thyroid archives can be
searched by anyone (even non-members). Archive searches can
reveal all the names and e-mail addresses of all the people who
*ever* posted a message to Thyroid.
Open participation is desirable, but lurking is also
encouraged. If you wish to retain your privacy, you must lurk.
10. The Decision of the Judge Is Final
This LISTSERV discussion is a free service to the
Internet community. The responsibility to keep it going on a
day-to-day basis falls on the "owner" of the list. The owner,
therefore, is the final arbiter of all questions and disputes,
and ultimately judges all questions of list access, operation,
membership and content. Questions and comments about this
policy can, of course, be directed to
<[log in to unmask]>.
11. Please Respect Copyrights
Electronic mail has created new and wonderful ways to
share information widely with others, but copyright
restrictions still apply to how we may distribute the writings
of other people. Under current law in the USA, every word is
copyrighted as soon as it is written. So in other words, you
need not include the word or symbol for "copyright" in a
message for the message to have your copyright. Consequently,
you and I must ask another person's permission to use their
writings, on the Internet or otherwise, regardless of whether
the writings are marked as "copyrighted."
The ground rules of the Thyroid mailing list allow brief
quotations of other people's messages to the Thyroid mailing
list within the context, and TO retain the context of the
Thyroid discussion. It is assumed that everyone, every Thyroid
member, is asynchronously discussing <Thyroid disease> together
in various threads, and therefore brief quotes serve to focus
on the topical subject of each message and direct the flow of
the discussion.
Using brief snips of another person's or persons'
contemporaneous writing from the Thyroid discussion list to
further discuss ongoing topics on Thyroid is therefore at least
tacitly acceptable, with or without the author's explicit
permission. However, this rule is *very* limited in its
application, and this rule does not free you to break copyright
laws.
Extensive, substantial, or out-of-context quotes of other
people's writing requires the author's permission, because the
author owns and legally controls the copyright to their own
words. This is especially true when material is cross-posted
to another electronic mailing list, where the rules and context
may be utterly different from the Thyroid mailing list.
If you want to forward a Thyroid message which includes a
quote, you need both the author's permission and the permission
of the person who was quoted.
E-mail just makes copyright violation easy -- not right,
not polite, and definitely not legal.
12. How to Search the Thyroid Archives (Temporarily Unavailable)
One important feature of our LISTSERV software is the
ability to maintain archives of mailing list messages. Because
of this, we on the Thyroid mailing list are creating a
historical base of information that is beneficial to ourselves
and others. Anyone can search the Thyroid Archives.
The Archives contain a copy of every message posted to
the Thyroid mailing list. To search the Thyroid Archives by
e-mail, send your query to
[log in to unmask]
For more information on archive searching, send the command
get listdb memo
to
[log in to unmask]
13. Short instructions on LISTSERV SET options
All of these "command" messages should be sent to the
LISTSERV clerical robot at:
[log in to unmask] <<NOT to the Thyroid list address, please!>>
What you want to have happen is followed by the message to send.
To Subscribe
SUB Thyroid YourFirstname Lastname
To Unsubscribe
SIGNOFF Thyroid
To Stop List Mail Temporarily
SET Thyroid NOMAIL
To Restart Mail
SET Thyroid MAIL
To Receive Only One Mailing Each Day
Which Contains All the Day's Posts
SET Thyroid DIGEST
To Receive Only One Mailing Each Day
Which Contains Only the Subject:
Line and Sender: for Each Message
SET Thyroid INDEX
To See Your Distribution Options
QUERY Thyroid
To Receive a Copy of Your Own Mail
SET Thyroid REPRO
To Get a Listing of LISTSERV Commands
HELP
To Get the Thyroid Welcome Guidelines
GET Thyroid welcome
All of these "command" messages should be sent to the
LISTSERV clerical robot at:
[log in to unmask]
There is also a World Wide Web un/subscription interface
for the Thyroid mailing list. The URL is
http://www.Emissary.Net/thyroid
Web users can set all their distribution options,
subscribe, unsubscribe, and read and search the Thyroid
archives from the above page. Try it, you'll like it. 8=]'
Thank you for your interest in the Thyroid discussion list.
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Last Updated: 22 February 1997
Copyright (c) 1996-1997, Emissary.Net; all rights reserved.
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