Unity Games Etiquette - REVISED January 25, 2006

This is an auto-post... Please read carefully so that the UG list is a more
efficient place for both posters and readers.

The number of posts for the Unity Games list has grown rather substantially in
the past months and so here are a few tips to help those who feel a bit lost
under the weight of the emails.

1. When posting to the Unity Games list, try to keep your subject lines in tune
with the content of your message. If you reply to one email but the subject
starts to drift, please feel free to change the subject line to reflect the new
topic. This makes it much easier for those reading to filter on the subjects
that interest them most.

2. When posting to the Unity Games list, try to cut down on the unnecessary
quoted text (text from the person you are replying to). This is especially true
of the boiler-plate Unity Games material that is appended to every posted
message. It's hard to read these messages with lots of extra quoted text -
especially in digest mode. The number of messages has grown substantially
lately and not everyone can keep up - so please be judicious in cutting out text
in replies.

3. If the number of messages is getting to you (!!), feel free to go into digest
mode where you receive one message a couple times each day containing a digest
of all posts. You get the same information, but slightly delayed. There is
also web-based browsing of the group where you can read the messages online (and
get no emails). You can configure this at the Unity Games homepage (see below
for the link - use the Edit My Membership option from the UG homepage) or you
can send a message to Unity_Games-owner@yahoogroups.com and we can do it for
you. If you decided to stay in email mode, be aware that most good email
clients allow you to filter your incoming messages and file them away in a
folder different from your "inbox". You can easily search on the word
"[Unity_Games]" which appears in every message from the list and use that to
trigger storing your messages in a convenient folder for later viewing.

4. To help people filter on content that is most appropriate for them, please
use the following tags in your subject lines (the braces should be included to
make the tag stand-out for filtering):

[OT] - For posts which are off topic.
[SA] - For Session Announcements (the auto-poster uses "Reminder from the
Calendar of Unity_Games" as the first line).
[SR] - For Session Reports and games played during local Sessions.
[GR] - For Game Reviews.
[META] - for discussions on or about the UG list.

Posts without a tag will be for general game-related discussions, asking about
sessions, discussions of the big Unity Games days, etc. If you miss using a tag,
don't follow up the post with an apology - just let it slide and hopefully
anyone responding will add a tag if needed. Again, most general discussion can
go tag-less. This will go a long way to allowing people to filter on the UG
content. Remember, all UG posts will have the "[Unity_Games]" tag automatically
applied so these additional tags are used to filter and sort within Unity Games
content.

5. Speaking of off-topic posts... Please try to keep these to a minimum.
General game discussion is fine but the list has gotten large enough that
off-topic comments (even if short) can overpower and bury the reader as they
might not have time to read everything. I've gotten emails from people who have
missed event announcements buried around lots of off-topic or only marginally
game related postings. Posting short semi-off-topic or humorous follow-ups to
messages is perfectly fine - just cut down on the original post as much as
possible to keep the read-time short for others.

6. We do allow occasional game-related for-sale or for-trade messages as well.
These should be only for personal trade/sell game-related items and should not
be too frequent - do not flood the list with personal sales emails. If you have
more than one item for sale/trade, consider posting them together in a single
discrete email. Do not conduct your sales on the UG list - after the initial
post please keep all excahnges/haggles off-list in private email. Basically, a
good use of this is when someone wants to clean out thier closet and sell/trade
games to local friends to save on shipping, hassle, etc. Mentioning bargains
found at a store you have no affiliation with is fine (and encouraged!). We
currently do not allow any auctions on this forum (either direct auctions or
links to auctions at another site like ebay) and we do not allow posts from
commercial sources (stores or other related parties).

Taking the time to read and understand these steps will make reading the UG list
more enjoyable for everyone. Thanks!

To configure into digest mode or to change any of your settings, you can visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Unity_Games

Our main homepage is now at http://www.unitygames.org

--
Dave Bernazzani
daveber@...