CWA Etiquette-
1. One-to-One Communication
We define one-to-one communications as those in which a person is communicating with another person as if face-to-face: a dialog. In general, rules of common courtesy for interaction with people should be in force for any situation and on the Internet it’s doubly important where, for example, body language and tone of voice must be inferred.
1.1. Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws. (included in Community Guidelines)
1.2. If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you’ve received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution.
1.3. A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these “flames”) even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get flamed and it’s prudent not to respond to flames.
1.4. Wait overnight to send emotional responses to messages. If you have really strong feelings about a subject, indicate it e.g. via FLAME ON/OFF enclosures. For example: FLAME ON: This type of argument is not worth the bandwidth it takes to send it. It’s illogical and poorly reasoned. The rest of the world agrees with me. FLAME OFF
1.5. Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message, include enough original material to be understood but no more. It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
1.6. Don’t send large amounts of unsolicited information to people.
1.7 This includes sending messages through the Christian Women Affiliate Message System. Do NOT send messages out to all of your friends on the network. Unless it is something of great importance. This should NOT happen Often.
You will find that people will tire of this quickly and choose to stop receiving ALL your messages. Use the Forums!
2. One-to-Many Communication (comments on articles, discussions)
Any time you engage in One-to-Many communications, all the rules for mail should also apply. After all, communicating with many people via one mail message or post is quite analogous to communicating with one person with the exception of possibly offending a great many more people than in one-to-one communication. Therefore, it’s quite important to know as much as you can about the audience of your message.
2.1. Consider that a large audience will see your posts. That may include your present or your next boss. Take care in what you write. Remember too, that mailing lists and discussion boards are frequently archived, and that your words may be stored for a very long time in a place to which many people have access. (Our Formal Forum can be saved as a pdf by any member)
2.2. Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Don’t wander off-topic, don’t ramble and don’t send mail or post messages solely to point out other people’s errors in typing or spelling.
2.3. If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
2.4. If you should find yourself in a disagreement with one person, make your responses to each other via mail rather than continue to send messages to the list or the group. If you are debating a point on which the group might have some interest, you may summarize for them later.
2.5. Don’t get involved in flame wars. Neither post nor respond to incendiary material.
2.6. Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than gratuitous replies to replies.
2.7. Read all of a discussion in progress (we call this a thread) before posting replies. Avoid posting “Me Too” messages, where content is limited to agreement with previous posts. Content of a follow-up post should exceed quoted content.
Our etiquette guidelines are based on RFC 1855.