|
Virginia Chiropractic Association’s VCAdoctalk
E-mail Discussion List Policies
Updated 2/4/05
The purpose of VCAdoctalk is to enhance communication and dialogue among VCA members and create a more cohesive chiropractic community in Virginia.
The purpose of these policies is to assure a high quality of communication and discussion as well as protecting the VCA and its members from incurring legal liability. The following rules apply to every discussion list member.
1. Use and participation on the VCA e-mail discussion list is a privilege granted to members of VCA, each of whom signifies his/her agreement to the terms of this policy by utilizing the
discussion list.
2. Discussion list members must provide a "signature" that identifies, at the very least, their true first and last name, and the city in which they practice and/or live. Additional information is optional.
3. Discussion list members shall not post any of the following:
a. Chain letters.
b. Virus alerts, hoaxes, and urban legends. For more information please check the following sites:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/, http://www.vmyths.com/ or www.snopes.com.
c. Promotional materials to solicit business or engage in buying and selling of goods or services, except for materials announcing or soliciting participation in programs, activities or membership
of VCA.
d. Content that may be actionable under antitrust laws. This includes but is not limited to: sharing of fee information, any activities that may be construed as "price fixing," and calls to boycott.
e. Content that is threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, hateful, derogatory against any person based on race, religion, gender, ethnicity or any other identifiable
characteristic, or illegal in any way, whether such content is intended to be humorous or not.
f. Content that you do not have a legal right to post.
g. Content that contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs that interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software, hardware or telecommunications equipment.
h. Content that detracts from an environment of fair, reasonable, honest discussion.
4. Jokes or other posts which are primarily comprised of humorous content shall include in the subject line some identification of the post as "humor" or "joke" or something similar. In no case
shall a member post any content, whether humorous or otherwise, that is profane, obscene or derogatory to any person or group based on their race, religion, ethnicity or gender.
5. Members who fail to abide by these rules may be removed from the discussion list.
a. The member will receive three warnings from the VCA. The three warnings shall be aggregate of all warnings for any violation in any category. If the member violates these rules after having received three warnings within three months, the member will be removed from the discussion list for a period of 30 days. At VCA's discretion, the member may receive additional warnings before being removed from the discussion list if VCA believes that the member's violations were unintentional.
b. If a member persists after having been removed from the discussion list and re-subscribed, the member may be removed from the discussion list indefinitely.
c. The member may appeal the warnings or the removal by sending an e-mail to
the VCA President and requesting an appeal hearing with the VCA Executive Committee or a committee the Executive Committee appoints. Appeals will be handled via telephone or e-mail, at VCA's discretion.
d. Decisions by the appeals body are final.
Disclaimer and Legal Rules
This list is provided as a service of the Virginia Chiropractic Association. VCA accepts no responsibility for the opinions and information posted on this site by others. VCA disclaims all warranties with regard to information posted on this site, whether posted by VCA or any third party; this disclaimer includes all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness. In no event shall VCA be liable for any special, indirect, or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss o fuse, data, or profits, arising out of or in connection with the use or performance of any information posted on this site.
The VCA monitors this site but does not undertake editorial control of postings. However, in the event that a posting is deemed inappropriate, VCA will take appropriate action.
The following Netiquette guidelines are offered to increase the productivity, enjoyment and efficiency of VCAdoctalk:
Include a signature tag on all messages; at a minimum, your name, the city in which you practice, and your e-mail address.
Use the subject line to state concisely and clearly the specific topic of your comments. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and to search the archives by subject.
Include only relevant portions of the original message in your reply, delete any header information, and put your response before the original posting.
Only send a message to the entire list when it contains information that everyone can benefit from.
Send messages such as “thanks for the information” or “me, too” to individuals – not to the entire list. Do this by using your e-mail application’s Reply to option and typing in or cutting and pasting in the e-mail address of the individual to whom you want to respond. To respond to the entire list, use the Reply to All option, and then delete ALL other addresses in the address field except VCAdoctalk@chirolists.com, to avoid duplicative postings.
Do not forward jokes or other “non-business” e-mail to the listserv.
Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the list”, through the listserv. Instead, follow the instructions provided to remove yourself from the listserv or change your e-mail address.
Warn other list subscribers of lengthy messages either in the subject line or at the beginning of the message body with a line that says, “Long Message.”
The following are excerpted from the book Netiquette by Virginia Shaw:
▪ Remember the human. When you communicate electronically, all you see is a computer screen. You don’t have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate your meaning. And that goes for your correspondent, as well.
▪ Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life. Again, don’t forget that there’s a human being on the other side of the computer.
▪ Know where you are in cyberspace. What’s perfectly acceptable in one area may be dreadfully rude in another. For example, in most TV discussion groups, passing on idle gossip is perfectly permissible. But throwing around unsubstantiated rumors in a membership organization’s discussion list will make you very unpopular there.
▪ Respect other people’s time and bandwidth. It’s a cliché’ that people today seem to have less time than ever before, even though (or perhaps because) we sleep less and have more labor-saving devices than our grandparents did. When you send e-mail or post to a discussion group, you’re taking up other people’s time (or hoping to). It’s your responsibility to ensure that the time they spend reading your posting isn’t wasted. Bandwidth is the information-carrying capacity of the wires and channels that connect everyone in cyberspace. There’s a limit to the amount of data that any piece of wiring can carry at any given moment. When you accidentally post the same note to the same group five times, you are wasting both time (of the people who check all five copies of the posting) and bandwidth (by sending repetitive information over the wires and requiring it to be stored somewhere).
▪ Share expert knowledge. The reason asking questions online works is that a lot of knowledgeable people are reading the questions. And if even a few of them offer intelligent answers, the sum total of practice knowledge increases.
▪ Help keep flame wars under control. “Flaming” is what people do when they express a strongly held opinion without holding back any emotion. It’s the kind of message that makes people respond, “Oh come on, tell us how you really feel.” Tact is not its objective. Avoid helping in the perpetuation of flame wars – series of angry letters, most of them from two or three people directed toward each other, that can dominate the tone and destroy the camaraderie of a discussion group. It’s unfair to the other members of the group. And while flame wars can initially be amusing, they get boring very quickly to people not involved in them.
▪ Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes. If you do decide to inform someone of a mistake, point it out politely, and preferably by private e-mail rather than in public. Give people the benefit of the doubt; assume they just don’t know any better. And never be arrogant or self-righteous about it. Just as it’s a law of nature that spelling flames always contain spelling errors, notes pointing out Netiquette violations are often examples of poor Netiquette.
Adopted by the VCA Executive Committee on February 3, 2005.
Reviewed and ratified by the VCA Board of Directors on March 17, 2005.
To see the collection of prior postings to the list,
visit the VCADocTalk
Archives.
(The current archive is only available to the list
members.)
|
