Moderation Guidelines

The purpose of this moderation guidelines is to improve the functioning of this list, make it more accessible to everyone and control the quantity and quality of the traffic by proposing you some simple etiquette rules we hope you will apply. These Guidelines have been discussed at the assembly in Barcelona. To make a long story short :

• Write to the list in two languages or more.
• Inform on the list, debate on the forum.

Languages

RtF is a international project and people on this list probably speak dozens of different languages. That should be a force for us and not something that divides us or limits our process. But language issues also bring along lots of power issues : it is hard to express yourself in a language that you might not control very well, you could feel less « smart » while debating with a native speaker, international gatherings usually tend to use languages that comes from the big colonial empires, English, Spanish and French, etc. It is both really important to feel good while expressing yourself and at the same time make sure most of the people will understand you well. So we propose you the following :

• Write to the list in two languages or more.

So if you’re Portuguese and speaks a little English you could write to the list in Portuguese first and propose a translation in English below. This will take you a bit more time but many more people will be able to understand you. And that’s the point of writing to the list, right? If you receive a mail that you really can’t understand, you can try using online translators to decipher it, like http://babelfish.yahoo.com/. But, please, do notuse that to translate a message you will post on the list: it translates everything really badly ! If you feel like it, don’t hesitate to translate the others’ mails you receive in your own native language. It might be useful to people in your collective as well as many other people. Reply the message to the list and include your new translation.

Content

Hundreds of people are subscribed to this list and receiving emails you don’t really care receiving is a pain for everybody. So we should all try to limit the noise on the list and keep it as informative as possible so that nobody feels like unsubscribing, hopefully. We propose to use it to share, for example:

• information about the meetings, camps, gatherings, actions, etc. proposed by RtF or members of RtF
• invitations to read new documents
• invitations to join important discussions on the forum
• the RtF newsletter
• the outputs of the meetings, camps or gatherings
• reports of actions, etc.

But, please, don’t debate on the list. Every mail you send will be received by hundreds of people. If you feel the need to discuss an issue, start a new thread on the forum on the website. We will send another mail about the forum later.

• Inform on the list, debate on the forum.

If you wish to unsubscribe from the list there’s no need to send a mail to everybody, just write a mail to european.general.list-leave at lists.reclaimthefields.org. Then follow the instructions in the confirmation mail you will receive.