The Glia Society Electronic mail forum rules

Introduction

Below are the rules of the Glia Society's electronic mail forum, open only to the society's members. Said forum is a place for general intellectual discussion and announcements on any topic. Any offence against these rules may result in temporary or permanent friendly removal from the forum. The rules are mostly basic "netiquette", there is nothing extreme or idiosyncratic to them.

A remark: Over the years, various online fora have mostly replaced the functionality of the e-mail discussion group, which is now mainly used for announcements. For historical reasons, one may still study these rules.

Rules

1. Rudeness and personal attacks are forbidden, as (and for instance) are lies, insults, putting words into another's mouth, slander, character assassination, crime, or any other type of misbehaviour. While there are no taboo topics and there is absolute freedom of speech, this freedom does not exclude misbehavers from being punishable.
2. When replying to a message, quote only the passage or passages you are responding to and delete the rest, otherwise the full original message (and anything anyone adds to it) is repeated in all subsequent responses, causing unneeded use of bandwidth and energy, exhaust of harmful gasses into the atmosphere, and annoyance, and resulting in the freight-train-length messages consisting for 99.9 % of layers upon layers of quotations of quotations of quotations of… which we all hate so much. Especially, do not leave in an entire previous message that in itself contains one or more quotations. The latter specification of this rule can in no case be evaded with the defence "I was responding to the entire message", as that would render this obviously necessary rule powerless.
3. When introducing a new topic, do not just click "Reply" but change the subject line to reflect the new topic.
4. It must be possible for every member to identify you from your entry in the member list of the forum. If you use a non-telling e-mail address and/or pseudonymous or anonymous "From" field, you must put your name under every message sent to the forum so that other members know who you are, and also see to it that the non-telling address and/or pseudonym is mentioned in your member information for the official Glia Society member list (that is, in the information you enter in the Registration form; you can use that form to update your member information). Do notice that simply telling the Administrator or moderator who you are does not suffice; every member must be able to identify you independently without asking. Make certain you understand this fully and attend to it, because this rule is often violated.
5. If you have a private question to a particular person, ask it in a private message to that person, not in a message to the forum.
6. Do not repeat your point over and over again, apparently for the sake of having the last word.
7. Words like "truth" and "true" are reserved for information that is objective, factual, proven, absolute, independent of individual perception. Truth is by definition that which does not differ between individuals. For information that is subjective, opinionative, suspected, relative, dependent on individual perception, use words like "opinion", "view", or "perception". For instance, do not say "One person's truth is not the same as another person's truth", or "Truth is subjective"; such rhetorical contradictions in terms erode the word "truth" and confuse meanings of words. Instead, say "One person's opinion is not the same as another person's opinion", or "Truth does not exist; only personal views exist". This rule in no way curtails what can be said; it merely forces one to think and formulate clearly and consistently, and as such it helps to see possible errors in one's thinking. Also note that who makes the claim of "Truth does not exist" (or anything equivalent to it) therewith disclaims one's right to state that anything is or is not true, or to make any assertion at all, as such would constitute self-contradiction.
8. Do not challenge (discuss, dispute) the rules of the forum on the forum itself.

Kind additional remarks

1. In case one does not wholeheartedly agree with and applaud these rules, one is free to leave the forum and choose other ways of communicating with members; please do that rather than to challenge the rules of this forum;
2. For further study into civilized forum behaviour, see the excellent and highly recommendable free course "How to participate in an e-mail forum";
3. For deeper discussion of a specific topic, general fora like the present one are not ideal, and one is free to start a thematic discussion or activity group devoted to that topic, for which some guidelines are in the relevant document in the members-only web location, in the section "Courses, self-study materials, instructional materials".

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