Posting guidelines for the Mission-Based Massachusetts email list

Dear MBM Colleagues,

The following guidelines for posting to the email discussion list are

based on detailed feedback from members of the group. We ask you to

respect them whenever you post a message.

  • Use only plain text. This list doesn’t support graphics, HTML, or

attached documents.

  • Separate each paragraph with a blank line or listed item.

  • Avoid using all capital letters. In email, this is equivalent to

shouting, and considered an insult to one’s readers.

  • Clean up jagged margins; readers tend to get so discouraged by them

that they skip your message and go on to the next one.

  • Identify yourself. Readers pay more attention to a message when

there’s a name and organizational affiliation attached to it.

  • Trim, trim, trim! Unnecessary repetitions of previous posts, list

footers, and signature lines are tedious for other members to

negotiate. If you’re replying to a previous message, please trim away

everything but the essentials of that message and your response to it.

If you don’t trim your post down, and I think that it would benefit

from trimming, then I edit it myself. This means extra work for me,

and a trim job for your message that you as the author may deem unduly

harsh.

  • Double-check your subject line, and make sure that it summarizes the

topic. If you subscribe to the digest format of the list, then the

subject line will automatically be something like “Digest Number 123.”

Please change it to something more topical. It’s also helpful to trim

away clutter from previous generations of forwarding; “FW: Grants for

Nonprofits” is much more readable than “Fwd: FW: Re: FW: [Boston] RE:

Grants for Nonprofits.”

  • Write for a statewide readership. If you say that an event is

happening tonight at “the Firehouse in J.P.,” the Bostonians will know

that you mean “the Firehouse Multicultural Art Center in Jamaica

Plain,” but maybe the folks in Pittsfield won’t. And if they need to

drive out from Pittsfield to attend, it’s probably a good idea to give

them more than a few hours’ notice.

  • Write about subjects that pertain to nonprofit, philanthropic,

educational, community-based, grassroots, socially responsible, and

other mission-oriented organizations in Massachusetts. Readers

subscribe to the list because they are interested in this specific

topic. If you stray too far from it, other members of the group are

likely to ignore your messages.

  • If you have products, services, or trainings to sell, please

exercise the greatest possible restraint in your sales pitches. This

is a highly subjective matter, and the group moderators will use their

best judgement in approving or rejecting posts that offer anything for

sale.

  • While announcements about political matters that directly affect the

nonprofit sector in Massachusetts are sometimes appropriate, members

of the group are solidly opposed to political rants, calls to action

pertaining to partisan politics, fundraising pitches for political

campaigns, and extensive general discussions about politics. The group

moderators will use their best judgement in approving or rejecting

posts that pertain to political topics.

  • Frame your message in the language of civil discourse, and avoid

inflammatory rhetoric. Posts that are simply attacks on someone

else’s religion, operating system, ethics, ancestry, or attitude are

unacceptable in this email distribution list. The rule of thumb is to

assume that others are motivated by the best intentions, even when you

think that they are gravely mistaken.

Thanks for your attention to these guidelines. I’m sure that you will

find that following these suggestions is in the group’s best

interests.

Many thanks and best regards from Deborah

Deborah Elizabeth Finn

Mission-Based Massachusetts moderator

In praise of a simple solution

Dear MBM Colleagues,

Have you ever posted a message to the MBM list, but found that the

version being circulated looked odd, with all the lines running

together?

Garbled formatting is a leading cause of despair among readers of

email distribution lists, and using your “enter” key is something

positive that you can do to combat both the garbling and the despair.

Indeed, there’s an easy, simple solution to your formatting problem:

use the “enter” key twice to insert two blank lines when you come to

the end of a paragraph, or after you have typed in an item on a list.

This will put the proper amount of space between each paragraph (or

listed item) and what comes next. It will prevent everything from

running together, and make it more likely that other members of the

group will read your message.

If you’re not familiar with the “enter” key, you’ll find it on the

extreme right hand side of your keyboard,next to the quote mark (“)

and a row above the “shift” key.

I hope that this helps!

Best regards from Deborah