CONDITIONS FOR BEING SUBSCRIBED TO THE SWMM-USERS LIST SERVER

We endeavour to keep our lists thoroughly professional, with a strong focus on being helpful, promoting the wise use of the public domain software involved, free of commercialism and extraneous issues. The list may generate up to about 5 emails per day. It has an extraordinary signal to noise ratio, which we wish to protect. FYI, I have posted some netiquette ideas here.

Before I authorize your subscription I hope that you do not mind covering a few quick points that need to be aired (you must in your reply cover each and every point in this email):

1. Please very briefly state why you wish to subscribe: I would like to know whether you intend to use the list or its archive to promote any product or service, especially one that competes with the list's purpose (wise use of a public-domain software)? In general it is not permitted to promote to the entire list any product or service associated with you or your company. It is however permitted to post ONE line (linking to additional material on the Internet) regarding a commercial product or service, if, AND ONLY IF, it directly answers/solves the poster's question and is of interest to the entire list (otherwise reply to the person directly). For example, a permitted post would be: Q: "How can I get training on model X", A: "Here is a link to a workshop." An example of a NON-permitted post would be: Q: "What is the best way to model inflatable dams in SWMM Extran?" A: "Our product does it better, here is a description." Kindly email me directly if you read any posting that may be deemed to promote a product or service and not abide by this guideline.

2. If you wish to post an announcement that may conflict with this above guideline, please clear it first by emailing me directly at wjames@uoguelph.ca. I will generally post a simple one line announcement with an associated URL.

3. To develop a profile of users, I also need to know what company you work for and its products and services.

4. Use your official business email address, rather than a generic email domain such as hotmail, AOL, yahoo and the like. If you must use them, give clear reasons why. Bear in mind that this is a professional list and that we are proceeding to eliminate generic domain addresses.

5. Provide your office phone number where I may contact you during business hours to discuss issues that may crop up regarding postings.

6. No postings to the list are permitted that may be construed to be defamatory or legally actionable, whether regarding persons, companies or products. You are responsible for legal consequences of your broadcast statements. You must reply unambiguously accepting this responsibility.

7. You must agree not to post the postings made on this list on any other bulletin board, list or in any other forum.

8. On the other hand I require your permission for the use of your postings (un-attributed or attributed if appropriate), obtained from the list archive, in the user's group question and answer (Q&A) utility. The Q&A utilities are currently hosted on the CHI web page (www.computationalhydraulics.com).

Finally there are some irksome obligations on the part of subscribers that you should know about. Failure may result in summary deletion of your subscription.

9. In particular you alone are responsible for maintaining your subscription. Kindly sign off before your subscribed email address becomes defunct or your mailbox fills. Sign off instructions are appended to the bottom of every posting. Do not email me or the list asking for your subscription to be adjusted. Sign off and on before your IT manager changes your email address.

10. Do not use any automatic replies (e.g. "out of office") as they go to the entire list (potentially about 1000 busy folks).

11. Please do not use a lengthy signature regardless of your company's policies, because the archive is enormous and we need to reduce unnecessary info. Your email address is in any case in the FROM line. No legalese is required in your signature.

12. The list uses auto-anti-spamming software, and other auto-deletion utilities, so do not send any spams or spam-like wording, exclamation marks, $$ signs etc.

Most of these problems will probably result in auto-deletion of your subscription, so if you find that you are not receiving email from the list, or your emails to the list are rejected, please don't hesitate to re-subscribe. The system will let you know if you are subscribed.

Let me know if you have any questions or problems. I know that you will enjoy being a member of this helpful, professional group. I need your help to keep it that way.