Netiquette is not censorship!

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

An Open Conference
Since its inception, we have operated "cpro.military" as an open, 
"un-moderated" listserver on the Internet. It has always been our hope 
that participants would observe standard newsgroup etiquette, including 
the following:
1. Not using the conference for personal messages. If you think copies 
of your personal correspondence are of value to the entire group, then 
please preface with an explanation.
2. Not repeating different versions of the same message.
3. Not including the text to which you are responding.
4. Beginning long messages with a "This is a long posting" warning and 
perhaps even an summary.
Asking people to observe these and similar "netiquette" principles is 
not censorship. It is a service to the subscribers at large. Many 
people who receive this and other on-line services find it 
time-consuming and often costly to sift through cluttered in-boxes. 
They respond by asking to be removed from the list.
In the past, we have responded to complaints about irrelevant or 
individual postings by sending friendly reminders to participants. If 
we continue to lose subscribers, then we will be forced to actively 
moderate the conference, reviewing not the content of postings but 
whether they are written for the entire readership.
I also want to apologize for getting behind on my news items. I have a 
pile of brief reports to write, but I have been traveling and working 
on fund-raising. I hope to get to them soon.
Lenny Siegel