Addendum to ALLMUSIC Guidelines
by Don Thomason
<zzthom@ACC.WUACC.EDU>
If you don't want to get unnecessary grief or cause unnecessary
grief, please read and pay attention to the following posting
guidelines. (If you do want to cause unnecessary grief, you
are on the wrong list.)
- Do not send personal email to the list. Messages like "Hi Mike,
I like metal too. I'm glad to see you are a fan." should be sent
to Mike, not to the hundreds of other subscribers.
- Do not send chatter to the list. This is a group for discussing
music. There are other lists and other forums for other topics.
(Including places either designed for, or more tolerant of chatter.)
Messages like "Hi everyone. I really like cats. They are great.
I have two of them." do not belong on the list. Messages like
"Hi everyone, I really want to meet people and get mail" do not
belong on the list.
- Do not send unannotated lists to the list. No Desert Island Disks.
No Top Ten Guitarists. No Songs with Rain in the Title. No One Hit Wonders.
That doesn't make a discussion. That doesn't foster
discussion. It is nominally about music, but it is not appropriate
for this list.
- Do not ask "Why doesn't anyone talk about *****?" If you want a
discussion about *****, start one yourself. If you can't be bothered,
why should we?
- Do not send in messages that say "Me too. I agree." If you don't
have anything substantial to add, don't add anything. Send notes
of moral support "Gee Bob, great post" privately.
- Do not send messages that say "**** is really great." If you can't
tell us *why* or *how* they are really great, we don't want to hear
about it.
- Do not post multiple one line messages. You should avoid one line
messages anyhow, but if you have several of them that are substantial,
combine them into a single message. The list has a quota. Don't
bust it. They few minutes you take to put all the messages together
will save everyone a lot of trouble.
- Do not say "I like to every kind of music." Apart from the fact
that it is terribly undiscriminating, we *all* listen to a variety
of styles of music. Tell us *about* what you listen to. Don't
just list it.
- Do not ask "Hey, anybody out there?" Yes. We are out here.
- Do not quote all 300 lines of a long post just to add a one or
two line comment at the bottom. Use your editor. Context is
helpful, but we don't need to read the entire post over again.
Delete all but the essentials of the quoted material.
- Do not post ALL IN CAPS. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING AND IT
IS AGGRAVATING TO READ. Mixed case is much better.
-- Don Thomason