Here, in one place, is the Acceptable Use Policy for this list. Everyone who participates in this list must follow this Policy. The moderator of this list reserves the right to suspend or remove members who, under his or her judgement, has violated this policy.

I am trying to make this list a place where civil, informative, humorous, fun conversations can occur. That is the entire intent of this policy.

• Asking for recommendations for plumbers, electricians, masons, and the like.
  
  
• Discussing town politics, current news and events, schools, and other Lexington-related issues.
  
  
• Finding and providing housing in Lexington.
  
  
• Selling or giving away used stuff.
  
  
• Advertising concerts, plays, dances, etc., which either take place in Lexington, or involve Lexington residents.
  
  
• Announcing breaking town news.
  
  
• Finding other people in town who are interested in the same things you are.
  
  

The Lexington list covers a wide range of topics. You will almost certainly find that some topics interest you more than others. You should skip over or delete messages or topics that don't interest you. Doing so will probably make the list much more interesting and useful to you. Don't be surprised if some days nothing seems of interest -- topics you find more relevant will probably crop up again in a day or two!

• Posting html ("rich text") messages. See answer A1 in the Frequently Asked Questions for more info on this.
  
  
• Posting messages with file attachments. File attachments clog the digest and are often unreadable to some users.  Instead, copy and paste plain text into your message. This not really a suggestion: I have set up Yahoo!Groups so that it removes attachments from messages redistributed to the group.
  
  
• Posting messages which are not signed with your real name. If you'd like people on the list to take you and your words seriously, please sign the message with your real name.
  
  
• Forwarding virus warnings to the list.  This almost always causes more confusion than clarity. Please do not do it.
  
  
• Posting messages that don't have anything to do with Lexington. However, if you're creative, you can make just about any message have something to do with our wonderful town! If it truly does, that's fine -- but this doesn't mean that you should start or continue discussions, especially on controversial topics, that are not related fairly directly to Lexington. Have those discussions in private, not on the list.
  
  This one is hard because it is a judgment call whether or not, for example, Bush's policy towards Iraq is a local issue or not. Especially when there are Lexington citizens fighting in Iraq.
  
  
• Rebroadcasting: This one is easier, although not slam dunk easier. In most cases, when you have something you are burning to have others see, take the time to write, in your own words, your point and limit your quote to a pointer to a web site. If you don't have the time to write about the topic using your own words, perhaps that is a sign that your issue may not be important enough for the rest of us to read about either.

  The not-slam dunk case: Consider a message whose subject is "Lexington House Party for <Political Candidate>". What could be more local than announcing an event hosted by a Lexington resident for a national political candidate? But, in many cases, the person sending the message will be passing on information they received from someone else.

  A test to use when deciding whether or not to forward a meeting announcement to the list is: Is this quote primarily a notice about the date and time of a local meeting? Although the announcement message is probably contains information other than the place and time of the meeting quote also has information expressing an opinion about the meeting, it should be primarily about announcing the details of where and when the meeting will occur.

• Carrying on long, heated arguments with one or two other people. These really would be better off in private e-mail (off-list).
  
  
• Carrying on highly technical discussions about computers, networking, and the Internet. (But messages of general interest are fine.) There is another Yahoo Group devoted to broadband access to the Internet in Lexington, lex-internet@yahoogroups.com.

Until at least January 20, 2005, any messages expressing information (facts) or opinion about Politics or Religion should be sent to lex-polrel@yahoogroups.com, not lexington@yahoogroups.com. If someone makes a mistake by sending such a Politics or Religion message to lexington@yahoogroups.com, the first time they will receive a warning. The second time, they will have their rights to post to lexington@yahoogroups.com removed until January 20, 2005.
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• Making personal attacks on other list members. Personal attacks, name-calling, "flames," anger, sarcasm, "trashing" of or unfounded accusations about individuals or organizations, etc., are destructive to the list and the community it seeks to create, and are never permitted. Critiques of others' character or unstated motivations are also prohibited. Judgment as to what constitutes an attack, a flame, etc. rests with the list owner.
  
  
• Reposting private e-mail, whether signed or unsigned, without the author's permission. Think of it as like receiving a personal letter from someone and then tacking it up on a public bulletin board without asking the author. Not reposting private e-mail is really a special case of respecting the privacy of personal communication in general. But with the central role of e-mail on a list such as this, and the one-button ease of forwarding, it's important to emphasize.

If you do one of the above things (in section 2 or 3), you're just about guaranteed to get e-mail from many list members asking you not to do it any more. It's also possible that you'll get an e-mail from me asking you not to do it any more. If this happens, I'll also tell you that if you keep doing it, you're subject to being put on list probation for a month. Being on list probation means that all your postings will have to be individually approved by me until the probation is over.  Three incidences of inappropriate behavior subject you to suspension from list membership.

I don't like policing the list and I'd rather not have to do it, so please just don't do any of the above inappropriate things. I also don't claim to be perfectly objective, or perfect in any other way (please don't tell my wife or kids), and I don't always read every single message on the list. But I do have some firm ideas about what makes for a good list, I think they're pretty good ideas, and I will enforce them..

The principles that guide these tips are simple: we want our e-mail list to be interesting, civil, and manageable. Interesting means posts that are on-topic and make for good reading. Civil means posts that treat list members with respect, though it doesn't rule out a good argument once in a while. Manageable means fewer e-mails are better than more if they say the same thing. We all have enough noise in our lives.

PLEASE EDIT YOUR POST. When you reply to a message, please don't quote the entire previous message. Please take an extra few seconds to edit the amount of quoted material down to the bare minimum so that your reply will make sense. This especially helps the digest version of the list, where one long reply thread might fill a whole digest message.

CONSIDER ASKING FOR REPLIES TO GO TO YOU. If you're asking for a contractor reference, for example, you might consider asking people to e-mail you directly and offering to summarize the results. When you do this, you provide a very helpful service to the entire list, because you consolidate all the useful info into one message which can be saved if it's of interest, or skipped if it's not.

ASK YOURSELF: WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE? Think about whether your message is of interest to the whole list, or just the person you're replying to. If it's just the person you're replying to, consider sending it just to that person rather than the whole list. Note that when you reply to a list message, by default your reply will go to the individual person; if you want it to go to the whole list, you'll need to edit the "To:" field of your reply.  In any case, please note who your reply is going to and make it a conscious decision.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH. Did someone just say something that annoyed the $#@! out of you? Don't you just want to write back to the whole list and tell them what you really think of them? Well, go ahead and write it! Just don't send it for a few hours or a day. Re-read it before you send it. Rewrite it so it's civil. We'll all appreciate your efforts.

WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK. I'm happy to answer questions of style, form, etiquette, but not spelling :-).

The privacy policy of this list is pretty much determined by the Privacy Policy of Yahoo!Groups. Answer 3 above amplifies on the issue of reposting private messages.