Membership in a group hosted on our server brings a few recommendations we feel are necessary for the continued successful operation and administration of our groups. Betty and I are generally very easy to get along with (and for those who are interested, we get along with each other very well, too), however we have a few guidelines you need to follow. This list isn't exhaustive, and we can change things any time we feel a need. We recommend you should scroll to the bottom of this page and click on one of the links to the sites about Email formatting and Netiquette (which stands for Net-Etiquette, or Internet Etiquette).

Click on the Policy Title 01 Guidelines For Sending Email 02 Lurking 03 Changing Topics 04 Approved Topics 05 If You Get Offended 06 Posting To Multiple Groups 07 Challenge Response Email Servers 08 Social Networking Sites 09 Email Backscatter 10 No Flaming 11 Personal Privacy 12 HTML or MIME Email   13 Viruses And Other Hoaxes 14 Chain Letters 15 Soliciting Money 16 Copyrighted Material 17 Me Too or I Agree 18 Political Discussions 19 LDS Church Loyalty 20 Missionary Moms Rules 21 Bouncing Email 22 Suspending Email Delivery 23 ISP Quality and Your Email 24 Using Work Email Addresses

01 Guidelines For Sending Email Please follow these guidelines when sending email: A: Think of the members of these groups whose primary language IS NOT English and culture is NOT based in American culture. In other words, don't use culture-based, or even dialectic slang. (See Wikipedia.org/Slang B: Proof-read all emails before clicking send to make sure it says what you want to say. Never use slang. Slang is quite easily, and usually misunderstood. A word used locally may have a totally different meaning even in a different state within the United States. Also, don't use TM (text messaging) abbreviations, ever! They are annoying and don't mean anything to most people (if you didn't know until seeing the parenthetical comment, then the point is proved, right?). C: Check your spelling and grammar, especially punctuation and capitalization, so others will understand you. Remember, many on the list have English as a 2nd language, so won't understand local idioms. D: When answering an email from the list, DO NOT include the entire email in your response. Remove (or CUT) non-essential text from previous emails before sending. We have a size-limit on emails which is set by default to 40,000 characters. This is quite large, but you might be surprised how quickly that limit can be reached. If you don't know how to cut text before sending, ask anyone on the list for help, or a neighborhood ten-year-old. E: Don't send attachments. Virus files are often sent as attachments without the sender even knowing their computer is infected. If you have something that the groups really need, we can make it available through Firefox or Internet Explorer on our web server (see previous paragraph). If you do send attachments, they won't go anyway, and if you didn't read this, you won't even know why. It's not a rule so trying to send pictures or documents isn't breaking a rule, they just can't be handled by our email group server software so won't be passed through. We set it up that way on purpose. F: NEVER SEND EMAIL IN UPPER CASE! As elementary as this seems, it's surprising how often this is still done. Typing email in upper case is the same as YELLING AT PEOPLE. I'm sure you don't want folks to believe you do nothing but yell all the time, well, unless you do... Also, for those with poor eyesight, it makes reading much more difficult. Be nice, okay? Back To Table of Contents

02 Lurking Please don't be shy. It's okay to "lurk" (just a reader but never a writer), but joining in and asking and answering questions, is what will make these lists successful. Also, don't live on your PC and send email after email to the groups. Nobody appreciates group hogs. Back To Table of Contents

03 Changing Topics If you don't like the topics being discussed in your group, send an email with something you wish to have discussed. It's too often that we see members unsubscribe because others are discussing things they have no interest in. If your subject isn't interesting to the group, then it will not be adopted, otherwise, you'll get plenty of response and answers. Please don't be frivolous and just post to get attention. These groups are not yours, and are not 'all about you'... Back To Table of Contents

04 Approved Topics To continue on that last 'theme', remember these lists are not "all about you", or, just for your personal gain. Please do not monopolize the topics. They are also not owned by the members. The server on which they reside belongs to Betty and me. For this reason, if you ever feel offended by us, and have contacted us and still feel we are unreasonable and you can't get along with us, you probably should unsubscribe. You may be tempted to just block email from Betty, me, or ourldsfamily.com. If you do, you will be summarily unsubscribed. Back To Table of Contents

05 If You Get Offended Though related to the previous topic, please be aware that occasionally someone will offend you. Please don't block or black-list their email address. Doing so causes every message they send to be bounced to us. We are getting tired of those bounces which state email can't be delivered to so-n-so because they are not accepting email from thus-n-such. If a trend is seen with any individual, that individual may be unsubscribed. Back To Table of Contents

06 Posting To Multiple Groups Many of us belong to more than one list (group) and every one of those lists all request the same thing: Do Not Post The Same Email To More Than One List, or Cross-Post. Not only is it a waste of bandwidth, but you can also cause a clash of cultures -- remember every group has its own personality. Many of you will do this unwittingly by using the "Reply-To-All" feature all email programs have. If you do this regularly, you will be blindfolded and asked to walk the plank. Honest. Some posters break the rule by sending something to all the groups they are in so they don't have to re-type, or copy and paste, or who knows what. Don't be lazy, else you will be blindfolded and asked to walk the plank. Honest. (deja vu?) Get in the habit of NOT USING "Reply-To-All". Isn't that simple? But, if you just have to, here's your last warning, so find out where we keep those planks because you'll want to know how to use one. Hint: If you MUST send to more than one email group, just put them all in BCC. That way, none of the groups will get responses because BCC recipients are not actually sent so don't show up in a "Reply-To-All" or anywhere else. Back To Table of Contents

07 Challenge Response Email Servers For a while there was a trend to protect email clients from spam at just about any cost. That, however, is a discussion for another time. Suffice it to say, some companies, and a growing number of school districts, practise something frowned upon by 99.9% of all professional email administrators. It's called Challenge Response spam protection. It is very effective, but is also a problem, especially for us. In a nutshell, it's a server that requires anyone who wants to send email to you to 'register' with your email server. If you want to understand this better, visit Wikipedia.org/Challenge-response spam filtering, and read Interaction with mailing lists or other automated mailers (the paragraph beginning Opponents of C/R/ systems was written by the administrator of this site. It is based on years of experience). If you read the section under Criticisms, you will now understand why We Can Not Accept Email From These Servers. If you feel a need to use one of these services, or are the prisoner of your employer who demands it, please find out how to 'white-list' our email server to allow all email through, else you will not be allowed to use that email address for our email groups. You will be unsubscribed at the first receipt of one of the 'registration' emails, which don't go to a person, but are hidden in our administrative bounce folders which we check when we can. But, even finding these emails, we can do nothing to respond because we aren't the actual recipient. Suggested Solution: consider creating a free email address at gmail.com, email.com, netscape.net, netzero.com, juno.com, yahoo.com or one of the other places where free email addresses are available. Then subscribe the new email address to our groups (see #24 below). Before choosing an email host, please consider the information on our Poor Servers page. Back To Table of Contents

08 Social Networking Sites If you are a member of any "personal" websites, such as MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, etc. please respect the rule to not use the site's invitation feature to email your OurLDSFamily.com email group(s) to request 'friends', 'buddies' or whatever they are called. The reason is that those invitations which aren't blocked, invite the group email address, not the individual members of the group. That means if someone uses the link in the invitation email to accept, they are actually adding the email group address to the site, and not their own. Any email that goes to that new "member" will of course be blocked because it will not be sent by a real member of the group. The proper method, and the way we recommend, is to just email the group and tell them about the page and let each individual member decide if they would like to participate or not. Remember, you don't actually know the members of your group as you do your own family or ward members, so give them a choice. We have been made aware of some new sites that on the face appear to be social networking sites, but in actuality, are fronts for commercial ventures. Please do not promote these on the email groups, or do anything about which Policy #15 speaks. Back To Table of Contents

09 Email Backscatter Though this isn't your problem, many of you are affected by it. What is Email Backscatter? Among other things, it consists generally of any policy of some newer (as of 8/2005) email/spam filters to score an incoming email they deem as spam, and then send it back to the sender. Their customer (you) probably doesn't receive the email though we can't verify that. The returned email has verbiage something like, "this email has been rejected because it has an unacceptably high spam score." There is no way for you, the user to add this email to a whitelist or let us know why it was marked as spam. If your ISP has this type of policy, you will miss email and never know. We are putting some of these ISPs in our Poor Servers page. If your ISP is listed, you may wish to take a moment to let them know to put ourldsfamily.com in their whitelist database. Since this has become an annoying and significant problem (and is part of the previous policy), we have started to unsubscribe email addresses from these ISPs (currently dominated by public school systems which are doing their best to control a rampant problem, but doing it in a typically draconian, bureaucratic, and inappropriate manner). Back To Table of Contents

10 No Flaming For the uninitiated, Flaming is the practice of "going off" on another member of the group. There are many reasons group members get annoyed with others, like one time I intimated that I didn't think anyone should vote for Obama. Letting that slip was a huge mistake! Boy did I ever get flamed. These exchanges of emails are often referred to as Flame Wars. Any such email activity will not be tolerated (even if I start it... drat). If you feel your opinion is worth stating and you feel you can't state it in a non-disagreeable manner, please take yourself to the corner of your room and count to a very high number. If you can state it in a non-disagreeable manner, do so off the list so you don't start a Flame War. In other words, "learn to disagree without being disagreeable" else you may find yourself unsubscribed. Back To Table of Contents

11 Personal Privacy Please brush your teeth and comb your hair before sending emails. Okay that was a joke. You can approach your computer keyboard in any fashion you wish, however, we don't need to know about it. Be private and don't, as my Grandmother used to say, "Tell everyone the color of your guts." In other words, don't send personal things to the whole list. Though we try to control tightly who subscribes to our groups, still, you never know who's reading "over your shoulder" so to speak, and how personal information may be used later. One example: A mission president's wife found out some damaging information about a missionary in her husband's mission. Yes, there are some very important people on our lists who are anonymous (by policy and/or choice). Back To Table of Contents

12 HTML or MIME Email Please don't send email in HTML format. All email programs have a setting that indicates something like "Send plain text" or "No HTML email" or something similar (except for AOL v7 and later; Evil, that's what AOL is, just plain evil...). HTML is a very bad thing where digests are concerned (and even more for archives). Those who receive your postings in digest form (one email daily) will get pages and pages of garbage they don't have time to sift through to find a few words or sentences. HTML encoded email can have twice the HTML code than the actual message in the email. As of July 7, 2002 we have installed a patch to Majordomo which strips HTML code from emails if it is in one of two different formats which are the most common. As stated above, AOL users don't have the options to turn off HTML email. This patch does it for them. The archives are already cleaner. NOTE: If you use Incredimail, be prepared to have your email get to the group BLANK, empty, missing your message, etc. etc... In other words, Incredimail has problems. The reason is it puts HTML in the wrong place, as far as normal systems are concerned. Newer versions of AOL are doing that, too, but you can control it. Back To Table of Contents

13 Viruses And Other Hoaxes Please never alert the group to The Newest Virus, the Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe or other "important" news. Everyone has probably already heard about it from their off-list friends. If you can't verify your news, please send it to either Betty or I for verification. A good rule of thumb? Don't send it to the group unless it's directly related to the group's purpose. Also, you can go to the internet and verify whether the information is authentic or a hoax at one of a myriad of sites that debunk internet hoaxes. Just go to your favorite search engine and enter hoax or hoaxes debunked, or the name of the specific thing you have received, or some specific text from it, and you'll be able to find sites which tell you whether it's real or not. Back To Table of Contents

14 Chain Letters Never forward any "chain" letter to any groups. Chain letters are those kinds that say something to the effect, "Forward this to everyone you know" or "if you send this to 10 people, you will get ... ". Any email that tells you about getting something because the number of emails you forward is tracked is lying. There's no way for emails to be tracked that way so you can be sure someone is perpetrating a hoax. You can also look these up on internet hoax sites. Back To Table of Contents

15 Soliciting Money Never use our email groups, or any addresses you gather from them, to solicit money for yourself or any organization, or advertise for a business, either yours or not, regardless of need or the goodness of the cause, or products, unless specifically given permission in writing. We have a page just for this purpose. Please contact Karl if you have a product to advertise. In one serious case, a member of our groups was fired by her employer and was criminally charged after she used our email group membership to advertise for her employer. her employer was not LDS but had developed a good relationship with LDS Missionaries in his country and had even treated an entire zone to pizza during a zone conference. This happened in Southern Europe with a company whose products are sold by Deseret Book, Seagull Book and others. Back To Table of Contents

16 Copyrighted Material Never post copyrighted material without written permission of the copyright holder. Please cite sources. Please be honorable and honest. Back To Table of Contents

17 Me Too or I Agree Don't send emails to the whole group and just say, "me, too" or "I agree" or "welcome to the list", or similar things that add nothing of substance to a discussion. You can send those privately. This also isn't an invitation to send a bunch of stuff just to have something to say, either. Please see the checklist above. Back To Table of Contents

18 Political Discussions If you wish to have a political discussion, or an existing thread becomes political, change the subject line by putting OT (meaning off topic) or POLITICAL or some other equally noticeable word or abbreviation in it. Typically this would look like: Subject: [OT] Thoughts while reading Fablehaven. If you wish to talk politics, visit and consider joining the LDS Conservatives email group. Back To Table of Contents

19 LDS Church Loyalty We are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon Church as it is commonly, though erroneously, called. Therefore, be it here known that we will not tolerate any murmuring, degrading of church leaders or debate about church counsel, principles, practices or policies. We recognize, however, that we do not represent the church. We expect you to maintain discussions that would be appropriate to have with your bishop, without, of course, any of the confidentiality that might come up there. Back To Table of Contents

20 Missionary Moms Rules Betty wrote an email to her Missionary Moms lists which you should also read along these same lines, but which is much more specific. I have a copy for you to read here. Back To Table of Contents

21 Bouncing Email There are 2 types of email bouncing I have to monitor to keep our groups running smoothly: Hard Bounces which means you discontinued your email account, or your provider did it for you. Soft Bounces which indicates that you haven't deleted email from your INBOX for a while, and your ESP is refusing to accept email sent to you. This is usually referred to as being Over Quota In #1, the first time I see a bounce with a message something like this: user unknown, or account suspended, or account discontinued, or even account temporarily disabled (because we don't know how long temporarily is), the affected email address will be unsubscribed immediately. I had to assure Yahoo I would do that before they would take me off a deferred email host problem list. I did it anyway, but they had to know. If your email begins to bounce because of #2, you will also be unsubscribed, but I'll give you 3 or 4 days to fix the problem, or more if there's a weekend. Please don't allow your inbox to become full else you will find you have been unsubscribed. If you are going to leave for vacation, or need a break of a couple weeks (no more than 4), see #22 (next entry) about Suspending Email Delivery. If you've bounced and want to be re-subscribed, please go to Email Groups Problem Form and enter a trouble ticket. Back To Table of Contents

22 Suspending Email Delivery If you go on vacation and can't check your email, be sure to visit our NoMail page, else when you return, you'll probably find you have been unsubscribed. This is especially the case if you are using a business email address with an auto-responder telling everyone who emails that you are gone for a period of time, but if they need help to email so-and-so... Back To Table of Contents

23 ISP Quality and Your Email Server Quality. I have compiled a list of servers I frequently see problems with. If you are interested in changing ISPs, you may wish to check this list. It can be found by clicking here. NOTE: If you suspect you are missing emails, try a new email address and see if it improves. You may have a poor email server/ISP and just need to switch. Back To Table of Contents

24 Using Work Email Addresses May we make a recommendation that you not register your work email address. It is considered by most employers to be inappropriate and unprofessional for you to receive non-work related email at a work email address. This isn't always the case, especially if you own the company, which means you can do whatever you like with your email server. But, for the rest of us, please consider getting a free email address at one of the myriad of email hosting sites available (think: gmail.com, etc.). If you don't know where any of them are, just ask your group, or us. NOTE: Many work email servers are so tightly controlled that much of the email from your email group will be tagged as spam and quarantined, or just blocked outright. If you find people talking about things you haven't heard before and it seems you are in the middle of a conversation with parts missing, this may be why. More likely, you will miss the entire thread because most group members just don't cut unnecessary parts, so whatever caused the email to be banned will be there throughout the discussion. You will miss email. I see it every day because most email administrators configure their systems to send responses back to us (called Email Backscatter. They think they are doing us a service by letting us know the email was blocked. All they are doing is annoying us, and hundreds of other ISP/ESP organizations. It's a bad practice and will land them on the Poor Servers page). Another issue is when you are gone from work for a period of time, and setup some type of Autoresponder. Every time you get an email, a bounce-back goes to me which gets annoying. The group doesn't know you are 'out of the office', but I sure do. This alone is a good idea not to use your work email address. If you have to, please use our Nomail form to pause delivery of email from the groups. There is one more concern. What if you lose your job? Your private correspondence at a work email address is the property of your [former] employer, thus open for review. If they summarilly delete the email address, we'll receive multiple bounces and subsequently unsubscribe that email address, but if they don't delete the email address, it will continue to receive email from the groups, and your other associations, thus opening you up to scrutiny that may violate your personal privacy. I'm sure there are other things you should consider along these lines, such as using an email address for work at home, but which is also your personal email address. Get a free email address to alleviate having to constantly sift through group email to get to business email. You will appear, and be, more professional, don't you think? Back To Table of Contents

Well, I hope this has been enlightening and gives you an idea of the standards we hope to maintain. As I think of things, through what I encounter and through member suggestions, I'll update this page. So you remain informed, please come back for a review from time to time. No, really. Read this again, okay? For a concise and thorough explanation on the use of HTML in your Email and links to Netiquette, plus some other things, please visit: HTML in E-mail: a bad idea by Thomas Gramstad of Norway. Also on his page are links to Netiquette pages which used to be listed here. Thomas has assured me this page will be constant and he will update it from time to time. (THANKS Thomas!!) Thanks, Karl L. Pearson, Owner/Administrator, the sites at, OurLDSFamily.com

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