The MOST's Rules of Etiquette

Just like any other group of people, The MOST has its own internal way of operating. On this page, we try to provide you with a sense of the 'personality' of the organization and a set of guidelines to follow when interacting with our members.

#1 - Respectful Interactions Only. No Flames!

There will be NO flames in any of our forums. Period. End of discussion.

However, if you're the kind of person that thinks that "respectful = humorless", please try to lighten up a little. I've kidded with some of our members in official correspondences, and they've kidded back. We LIKE it that way. I don't want people to think they can't make any good-natured wise cracks in their postings, i'm just insisting that they *BE* good-natured about it. I'm also asking everyone to lower their "that pissed me off" threshold when reading anything that comes out of The MOST.

As Rodney King said when trying to help to defuse a situation that got WAY out of hand, "Can't we all just get along?" If someone actually offends you with something they post, discuss it with them via private email to see if there's really anything to be offended over. In most cases what offends people is just a misunderstanding. We COULD eliminate the necessity to discuss this type of issue by declaring that all interactions be 'totally humor-free', but... guess what? The people who are actually making this work DO have well developed senses of humor, and we don't take offense easily.

#2 - Be Patient. Sometimes Services Are Late.

I keep pressuring myself to move faster on various tasks for The MOST, and sometimes some of the other team members send me apologies because they are going to be 'late' with some piece of this that they had committed to. Sometimes a work assignment comes up when i had planned to work on MOST-related services, and sometimes something comes up in my personal life that needs attention. I assume that the other people who volunteer to provide the services here have similar situations occur. To avoid having people feel torn between their commitments, the official policy of The MOST is that ANY commitment to a deadline on the part of one of our volunteers is made with the understanding that unforeseen responsibilities or opportunities will take priority over MOST-related activities. When an agreed upon deadline can't be met, the individual IS responsible to advise us by (or, much preferred, before) the deadline that it won't be met, but neither apology or further explanation is expected.

#3 - Piracy, We Hate It... A Lot, A Lot, A Lot!

The people who provide the expertise and energy to make The MOST itself run are all, by definition, developers. Developers as a whole are hurt by the practice of software piracy. People in the general community just don't see it as a crime in most cases and are even open about doing it. The MOST has a strong policy that we do not condone piracy, and explicitly ask that anyone using our services agree not to use The MOST as a way to obtain - or study - pirated materials. Yes, we know we can't enforce this. That part is up to you.

Closely related to this is the necessity to actually pay for any shareware that one uses. Each shareware application has its own standard for the amount of use one may make of it free before paying the fee to continue use. For purposes of compliance with our policy regarding piracy, anyone using shareware beyond the limit without paying the fee is also considered to be pirating.

#4 - Privacy? Just Ask.

We post names and addresses here, as well as information about our member's systems, software, experience, etc.. Having it here helps us communicate with each other more effectively, but it also may provide more information about some of you to the general public than you would wish to have shared. We only post what has been given to us as part of collecting information that we stated up front would be posted publicly, but some of you may have misunderstood the intended use of the information or have subsequently decided that you don't want the information posted. No problem. We respect your right to privacy and apologize for any perceived infraction.

If we have anything posted about you that you wish to have changed or removed from the site, send email to the person indicated in the footer of the associated page as the one who maintains that page. We will make performing and posting the correction a high priority task.

#5 - Postings MUST Be On Topic.

The description of each list on this site explains the specific criteria for posting to that list. Before subscribing to a list, please read the criteria fully and then abide by them for every posting. If the list posting rules require you to place a code in the subject line, please do so.... for every posting

The MOST discussion lists are not the place for discussions of Mac advocacy, personal debates on ANY subject, or anything else that does not directly relate to the purpose of the list as defined in its section of the website. There are specific facilities available on the net for these OTHER types of discussions and we do not want to see the MOST lists clogged with this type of traffic.

Spurious postings that do NOT meet the criteria for posting to the specific list will be VERY unwelcome. These lists will have MANY subscribers and we do NOT want their in-baskets unnecessarily cluttered. We will not look kindly upon deliberate attempts to disrupt the list. Warnings will be issued to you if you do cause excessive noise, flames, or are distrupting the list. If abuse continues, you will be unsubscribed from the list.

... on the other hand: These lists are subject to the same "keep a sense of humor" rule that applies to all aspects of The MOST. The lists are the only place that most of us interact and a bit of good-natured humor along with the discussions of OS calls and coding techniques are part of making the interactions more interesting and helping us get along socially as well as professionally. Once in a while a discussion may degenerate into silliness or spawn a loosely-related digression that may not be of interest to everyone on the list. As long as this type of occurrence is kept infrequent this is not a problem and it won't be treated as such. The list mothers will let anyone know when they've gone TOO far, but will exercize reasonable latitude to avoid discouraging our participants from having fun while they work. This is clearly a subjective judgement call, but i think the spirit of the situation is ALSO clear.

Note that the FAQ for MOST-General explicitly authorizes 'frivolous and purely social emails' on that particular list. Think of it as the "break room" for members of The MOST.

#6 - Don't Spam Any of Our Lists.

The MOST's lists are not the place for general commercial announcements, although there are legitimate exceptions to that rule. We will certainly discuss tools, utilities, and other products that are of direct interest to the Mac developer community on all of our lists. Some of these products may have been produced by some of our members :-), and in those cases it would be hard NOT to promote one's own product.

Additionally, we do NOT consider announcements from any of our members of Mac OS products which they have developed to be spam. The MOST exists to encourage such development, and we are happy to publicly recognize before our entire membership those who have succeeded in producing commercial quality Mac OS apps.

However, the lists are NOT to be cluttered with announcements of unrelated products or services, 900 numbers of "hot and willing co-eds", "Make Money" fast schemes, chain letters, or any other commercial announcements.

#7 - Don't Try To Be The List Mother.

When someone breaks any of the rules associated with the use of any of The MOST's lists, you are NOT helping the situation by posting your admonition of them to the list... In fact.... you're just making the situation worse. Count on the official list mothers to address the situation, even if you don't see what we do about it.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998. Last Update to This Page: 1998/05/04
This Page Maintained by: radar pangaean * * * Original Author: radar pangaean
The MOST web site is built and maintained by the voluntary efforts/donations of our members.